How Controlled English canImprove Semantic Wikis

Tobias KuhnUniversity of Zurich

Fourth Workshop on Semantic Wikis (SemWiki) 2009Heraklion, Greece

1 June 2009

Tobias Kuhn, SemWiki 2009, Heraklion, Greece 2

Introduction

Idea: Using controlled natural language as a general interface language for semantic wikis

Attempto Controlled English (ACE) is a controlled natural language, concretely a subset of English

Can be translated automatically and unambiguously into various logical notations, e.g. frst-order logic, OWL, SWRL

AceWiki is a semantic wiki engine that uses the controlled natural language ACE.

Because the articles in AceWiki are written in ACE, they are formal and human readable at the same time.

Tobias Kuhn, SemWiki 2009, Heraklion, Greece 3

Complexity

ACE scales very well in respect to complexity:

COMPLEXITY

...

...

Tobias Kuhn, SemWiki 2009, Heraklion, Greece 4

AceWiki Interface

Tobias Kuhn, SemWiki 2009, Heraklion, Greece 5

Predictive Editor

Tobias Kuhn, SemWiki 2009, Heraklion, Greece 6

Usability Experiments

Two small usability experiments that test AceWiki

20 subjects / 6 subjects

Task: Collaborative creation of a knowledge base using AceWiki

Results:

78%–81% of the sentences were correct and sensible

61%–70% of them were complex (containing negations, implications, disjunctions, or number restrictions)

Creation of a correct sentence every 5–6 minutes

Defnition of a new word every 5–7 minutes

Tobias Kuhn, SemWiki 2009, Heraklion, Greece 7

Understandability Experiment:ACE versus MLL (Manchester-like language)

Tobias Kuhn, SemWiki 2009, Heraklion, Greece 8

Evaluation: ACE versus MLL

ACE was understood better, within shorter time, and was liked better by the subjects than MLL!

p-values obtained by Wilcoxon singed rank test:

0.003421

1.493e-10

3.24e-07

Tobias Kuhn, SemWiki 2009, Heraklion, Greece 9

Conclusions

Controlled English can give semantic wikis a very natural interface.

Controlled English can support a high degree of expressivity.

AceWiki is usable by untrained persons.

Controlled natural languages like ACE are more understandable than comparable common formal languages.

Tobias Kuhn, SemWiki 2009, Heraklion, Greece 10

Thank you for your attention!

Questions/Discussion