Specifying and Verbalising Answer Set Programs in Controlled Natural Language

TL;DR

This paper introduces a bi-directional grammar system that translates between answer set programs and controlled natural language, enabling specification, verbalisation, and modification with semantic consistency.

Contribution

It presents the first bi-directional grammar capable of semantic round-tripping for answer set programs in controlled natural language, enhancing readability and modifiability.

Findings

Automatic translation from natural language to answer set programs

Verbalisation preserves semantic equivalence and improves readability

Supports program modification through natural language specifications

Abstract

We show how a bi-directional grammar can be used to specify and verbalise answer set programs in controlled natural language. We start from a program specification in controlled natural language and translate this specification automatically into an executable answer set program. The resulting answer set program can be modified following certain naming conventions and the revised version of the program can then be verbalised in the same subset of natural language that was used as specification language. The bi-directional grammar is parametrised for processing and generation, deals with referring expressions, and exploits symmetries in the data structure of the grammar rules whenever these grammar rules need to be duplicated. We demonstrate that verbalisation requires sentence planning in order to aggregate similar structures with the aim to improve the readability of the generated specification. Without modifications, the generated specification is always semantically equivalent to the original one; our bi-directional grammar is the first one that allows for semantic round-tripping in the context of controlled natural language processing. This paper is under consideration for acceptance in TPLP.