Attempto Controlled English

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempto_Controlled_English

by sublinear • 3 years ago

100 69 3 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

sublinear• 3 years ago

Does there exist a workplace where product owners have a background in technical writing and they're solely responsible for business logic instead of sloppy requirements?

fallingmeat2• 3 years ago

Most high integrity software development includes roles for systems engineers that do this (avionics, medical, nuclear, rail, automotive). See standards like ARP4754A, INCOSE working group on requirements engineering for leads, or if you are really into it, applications of formal methods like DO-333

dang• 3 years ago

Attempto Controlled English - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20950126 - Sept 2019 (60 comments)

AceWiki:an open-source wiki, that can understand english(almost) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1563384 - July 2010 (1 comment)

oezi2• 3 years ago

In the age of LLMs this seems like a waste of time to even think about constraining and formalizing languages. Why should human users restrict themselves in their expression if LLM systems can easily point out any remaining ambiguities?

ggm2• 3 years ago

What they seem to be doing at the moment is riffing on the ambiguities. If they point them out, then the outcome will be .. less ambiguous language which will tend to be like ACE.

Gimme the ball is idiomatic. How do you know it means Give me, and not Furble the ball? We're taught Give me, we say Gimme. Both have a role.

HPsquared• 3 years ago

It could also mean "please give me the management role overseeing the event known as the ball".

tgv• 3 years ago

I'm interested to see an LLM do that. Technically, nearly every sentence is ambiguous, but that clearly doesn't bother us. An automated system that can point out sentences humans are likely to interpret in multiple ways would be interesting. However, no such thing seems to exist.

fallingmeat2• 3 years ago

I recently made an LLM-based tool to identify inconsistencies with the INCOSE guide to writing requirements (identifying vague language, for example). Also have had some success translating those outputs to more structured language like LTL. I think it is doable

oezi2• 3 years ago

I am curious why you think this. A basic prompt of pointing out ambiguities should get you quite far.

I am pretty sure LLMs would be great to turn regular English into ACE including resolving detected ambiguities.

euroderf2• 3 years ago

When working as a tech writer, I was mildly obsessed with this. Nothing drives users away from your documentation like a lack of clarity that signals that (1) you're on your own now, pal, and (2) the writer had zero clue of the potential for chaos in interpreting what he is writing.

stareatgoats• 3 years ago

You make a valid point, LLMs intuitively change the need for such formalized languages. It may not be a total waste of time, but I fail to see how this slight exaggeration justifies how your comment is currently stamped into the ground, likely by the current livid rage currently directed at LLMs in the software developer community.

I get it, people don't like to have their lives disrupted, and I sympathize, just as I sympathized when secretaries, bookstore owners and others were forced to find other ways to make a living. At least in our case we still have (or can find) a job, it has just changed, to some extent even considerably.

ggm2• 3 years ago

My memory of Robert Lacy's biography of Ford is that he also introduced a simplified english for his migrant workers, as well as teaching them english in factory Schools.

I'm pretty sure South African miners used simplified english to get around tribal language barriers.

(these are distinct from the emergence of pidgin, they're directed intent to create synthetic languages, for specific outcome)

em3rgent0rdr• 3 years ago

Something like this would make for a great universal human language. In addition to this simplified grammar, it would also be great to limit vocabulary so only need a small dictionary, hopefully without any homonyms, homophones, or homographs.

mchaver• 3 years ago

The best example of this might actually be Wikipedia. There is a separate set of articles in a simpler and controlled form of English: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page , and details about the rules: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English

zokier2• 3 years ago

Simple English Wikipedia is not limited to Basic English

stavros11• 3 years ago

I doubt that English is a good basis for a universal anything, due to the extreme inconsistency of spelling and pronunciation. There are some other disadvantages, as there are in any language, but having to learn how a word is spelled and pronounced entirely independently of each other, with no correlation, is a big drain on time.

I imagine something like Esperanto would be much more suitable for the role.

arp2422• 3 years ago

The downside of Esperanto is that very few people speak it and is harder to learn in some ways as there's far less media in the language – you got that 1960s William Shatner film that's entirely in Esperanto, and maybe 2 or 3 more, and ... that's it.

Meanwhile you can learn English from watching Star Trek, Time Team, SpongeBob, reading Harry Potter, The Hobbit, shitposting on Reddit, etc.

For better or worse, English already is the de-facto universal language, or the closest we have to it. We tried the Esperanto thing back in the 20s, and it didn't really work out as there was very little interest outside of a fairly sizeable but ultimately limited group of enthusiasts. I don't see how Esperanto or any other constructed language will take off in the foreseeable future.

Continued evolution of English pronunciation and spelling seems like a more realistic and better option – the language will change anyway, as all languages do, so might as well ensure it changes in a reasonable direction. Time spent advocating Esperanto is probably better spent on advocating more consistent English.

msla4• 3 years ago

Esperanto is very Eurocentric, in grammar and phonolgy, not to mention being under-specified and idiosyncratic in ways that make it hard to learn. It's also sexist, completely apart from the fact it's gendered, and some of its vocabulary is ambiguous.

ginsider_oaks• 3 years ago

Lojban[1] is a constructed language which is (or tries to be) syntactically unambiguous. Of course even fewer people speak Lojban than Esperanto, but there's still a sizable community.

[1] https://mw.lojban.org/papri/Lojban

pif5• 3 years ago

The proper use of the Latin alphabet, or any other alphabet, should be top priority. Phonetic spelling: if you see it, you can pronounce it; if you hear it, you can write it.

Spelling bees have no sense in a rational language.

nine_k2• 3 years ago

Languages drift. What was straight spelling 10-20 centuries ago is now mismatch, because people now say these words differently. (Case in point: Italian vs classical Latin.)

To keep spelling in sync with pronunciation the spelling must be centrally controlled, like German, or Russian, or Spanish (the latter has the least-surprising spelling of all Latin-based modern languages I'm aware of, unless you're in Argentina).

Centralized control over English spelling is impossible due to a bunch of obvious reasons.

zokier2• 3 years ago

Phonetic spelling implies that one pronunciation is correct over all other alternatives, that certainly would not work for anything close to current-day english

euroderf2• 3 years ago

English has conflicting tendencies. The spelling is effective in distinguishing written forms of homophones, a feature that is papered over in many sound-based spelling reforms. But OTOH the spelling is often disturbingly awful - and obnoxiously misleading. A controlled English should (IMO) strike a balance between these two tendencies while opening the door to spelling reforms, which could be easily managed in a controlled language environment.

modderation• 3 years ago

I'm curious if a limited English dictionary would eventually start picking up loan words for new concepts, gradually bloating back into the modern (or future) English vocabulary.

Out of interest, I'd point at XKCD #1133, "US Space Team's Up-Goer Five" [1] and Thing Explainer [2][3] for examples of what gets lost when vocabulary is cut down.

[1] https://m.xkcd.com/1133/ [2] https://xkcd.com/thing-explainer/ [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_Explainer

zinekeller• 3 years ago

While not strictly a formal language, Standard Marine Communication Phrases (SMCP, https://wwwcdn.imo.org/localresources/en/OurWork/Safety/Docu...) is also a controlled form of English used in international maritime contexts to minimize ambiguity.

Animats• 3 years ago

That's close to signal flag language.[1] Which makes sense. It's used to convey the same messages, things ships need to communicate to nearby ships.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Code_of_Signals

imiric• 3 years ago

Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?

In all seriousness, these are good restrictions to follow when writing user-facing error messages. Developers tend to complicate the language, leading to more confusion.

junon• 3 years ago

ACE isn't for error messages or prose, it's for computers to understand natural language without needing an LLM (my own description). The idea is that ACE defines a strict syntax for English whereby computers can parse it reliably and human can read and write it reliably - just like SQL, but English.

MichaelZuo• 3 years ago

I eagerly await EQL.

ithkuil• 3 years ago

While ACE goes far beyond just style, I found that the guidelines set in https://www.plainenglish.co.uk/how-to-write-in-plain-english... (and similar attempts) are quite useful and happen to have a lot in common with ACE

pluijzer• 3 years ago

Not an expert at all but I am curious if training a LLM purely on ACE input would result in a smaller but still capable model. I guess a small regular trained model can then translate ACE to a natural language.

gwern• 3 years ago

Narrowing the task space results in better performance in the short run / with small cheap models, but worse performance in the long run. The model overspecializes and loses any generalizable capabilities because they are not necessary - like the old joke about how professors are like sea squirts, as soon as they get tenure they digest their brains as unnecessary. If you provide the model with adequate scale, the more diverse and challenging the problems, the better (https://gwern.net/scaling-hypothesis#blessings-of-scale).

So, if you trained a LLM on ACE only (and you somehow had enough to begin with), then it would fail to learn so many things. For example, it wouldn't learn about prose style, or other languages, or different speakers and identities.

rozab• 3 years ago

I wonder how this parses the classic joke:

A programmers spouse sends them to the shops. "Buy a pint of milk. If they have eggs, buy a dozen." The programmer returns with 12 pints of milk.

sillymath• 3 years ago

I tried to use the demo of the github page, but it doesn't work. It seems the page is stalemate since 2013.

kant2002• 3 years ago

I like ACE it's very interesting application of Prolog. While it focused on writing logical definitions, I think there interesting way of looking at how we try to express programming languages syntax to newbies in classrooms. I personally think that it is possible to find way of speaking about code which sounds a lot like English. Maybe that's because my English is not adequate.

I have super early experiments here: https://kant2002.github.io/EngLang/ but it's still super early

JohnDeHope• 3 years ago

This is weird. I write a lot of technical documentation, and it often comes out reading like this. It's almost like I learned this from somewhere, but didn't realize it.

ReactiveJelly• 3 years ago

Convergent evolution, perhaps

Attempto Controlled English

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