• current wiki systems
  • types
  • shortcomings
• multilingual CNL-based semantic wiki
  • definition
  • possible use cases
• AceWiki-GF
  • combination and extension of Attempto Controlled English, Grammatical Framework, AceWiki
  • implementation
  • evaluation

• wiki
  • user-friendly collaborative environment for knowledge management
  • content typically unconstrained natural language (NL), therefore not easily automatically processable
  • powered by software, e.g. MediaWiki
  • e.g. Wikipedia
• semantic wiki (= wiki + formal semantics)
  • provides: richer query language, consistency checking (via automatic reasoning)
  • content typically NL + typed links (i.e. RDF triples)
  • software: Semantic Mediawiki, ...
• CNL-based semantic wiki (= semantic wiki using CNL)
  • formal languages hidden (=> can use more expressive formal languages)
  • software: AceWiki

• multiple languages
  • natural: English, German, ...
  • formal: first-order logic, OWL, ...
  • languages for content vs user interface
• CNL-based
  • backed by formal grammar(s)
  • formal languages are hidden
• semantic
  • content automatically kept in sync via precise translation
  • consistency checking, question answering, ... (depending on the domain)
• wiki
  • user-friendly
  • collaborative

• multilingual ontology editor
  • e.g. environment where users agree on the content and multilingual vocabulary of an OWL-style geography ontology
• collection of tourist phrases
  • book structure (chapters and sections)
  • multilingual content presented in parallel
• catalog of museum objects (paintings, painters)
  • each object on its own wiki page
  • rich queries (e.g. "which Dutch painter painted which French painter?")

• Attempto Controlled English (ACE)
  • subset of natural English
  • well-defined translation to and from first-order logic, OWL, ...
  • end-user documentation: construction and interpretation rules
  • monolingual, fixed grammar, deterministic ambiguity handling
• Grammatical Framework (GF)
  • framework for multilingual grammar engineering
  • parser (translation, completion, ...) and libraries (resource grammar)
  • no GF-based wiki system connecting users, texts and grammars
• AceWiki
  • expressive semantic wiki system
  • front-end language: ACE
  • background reasoning language: OWL
  • monolingual, fixed grammar, no ambiguity handling

• D11.1: integrate ACE with GF (ACE-in-GF)
  • implement a multilingual grammar of ACE in the GF framework
  • cover the European languages supported by the GF resource grammar
  • joint work with the University of Gothenburg
• D11.2: integrate AceWiki with GF (AceWiki-GF)
  • implement connection to GF tools (GF Webservice / Cloud Service)
  • add support for the management of multilinguality, ambiguity, grammar
  • make the user interface multilingual
• D11.3: evaluate the outcome
  • multilingual and collaborative aspects of AceWiki-GF
  • translation accuracy of the ACE-in-GF grammar
  • suitability of the AceWiki-GF platform for other GF grammars
  • joint work with the University of Helsinki

An ACE grammar implemented in GF adds multiple natural languages as front-ends to ACE. As a result, these languages can be mapped to and from various formal languages already supported by ACE.

• implementation of the ACE syntax
  • extension of Angelov and Ranta (CNL 2009)
  • focus on the subset of ACE that can be mapped to OWL
  • almost 100% coverage at almost 0% ambiguity
  • no direct generation of discourse representation structures (DRS)
• multilinguality
  • support most RGL languages, among them the European languages Bulgarian, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latvian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish
  • RGL-based design provides automatic increase in quality and language-coverage over time
• status
  • some precision problems, e.g. anaphoric references do not obey DRS accessibility constraints
  • ambiguity and coverage problems in some languages

• wiki content is based on a (single) GF grammar
  • provided by GF Webservice / Cloud service
  • optimized for ACE-in-GF (but other GF grammars can also be used)
• wiki entry is GF abstract tree set
  • viewed via linearization(s)
  • can represent ambiguity
• multilingual viewing and editing of wiki content
  • grammar-based look-ahead editing that shows next possible tokens
  • ambiguity resolution via another concrete language
• grammar integrated into the wiki
  • grammar modules as wiki articles (wiki-linking of grammar and content)
  • grammar can be changed while editing the wiki

Every country that does not border a sea is a landlocked-country.

SubClassOf(
   ObjectIntersectionOf(
      :country
      ObjectComplementOf(
         ObjectSomeValuesFrom(
            :border
            :sea
         )
      )
   )
   :landlocked-country
)

Which country is a landlocked-country?

ObjectIntersectionOf(
    :country
    :landlocked-country
)

Design

• select trees and automatically linearize them to all the languages
• two selection methods:
  • hand-picked ACE-in-GF regression test sentences in ACE, parsed to trees (100 trees)
  • automatic bottom-up partial tree construction followed by probability-biased random generation (80 trees)
• exclude some trees and languages, resulting in 114 trees and 10 languages
• measure translation accuracy from ACE to other languages
• use Google Translate as the baseline and human evaluators as the gold standard

Results

• participants preferred ACE-in-GF translations to Google translations and post-edited them less

Design

• develop a 500-word geography lexicon
  • 3 languages: English, German and Spanish
  • 3 authors (incl. native speakers of German and Spanish, and a GF engineer)
• ask users of different languages to supply the wiki with sentences and tag each as true or false
• ask them then to evaluate others' sentences as true or false
• measure the user (dis)agreement and how much it is influenced by the automatic translation

Results

• 30 participants entered 316 sentences
• agreement level was ~83% with no significant influence from the translation

• customize to other types of grammars and reasoning
• improve collaborative grammar editing features
• improve ambiguity management (e.g. automatic reasoning-based ambiguity resolution)
• use the wiki content to automatically generate documentation, grammar fragments, look-ahead editor customizations, etc. for novice users (depending on their language)

• conference/workshop presentations about the AceWiki-GF system
  • Third International Workshop on Controlled Natural Language (CNL 2012)
  • 3rd Symposium on Advances in KRDB Technologies (SAKT 2012)
  • 10th Extended Semantic Web Conference (Semantics and Big Data) (ESWC 2013)
  • available from http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/site/pubs/
• AceWiki-GF
  • source code: http://github.com/AceWiki/AceWiki
  • demo wikis: http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/acewiki-gf/
• ACE-in-GF
  • multilingual ACE grammar
  • source code: http://github.com/Attempto/ACE-in-GF
• Java API for GF services (GF-Java)
  • used by AceWiki-GF + some MOLTO partners
  • source code: https://github.com/Kaljurand/GF-Java