Runtime verification using Larva

Larva, which has been in use and continuous development for almost a decade, has been extended in several ways and used in a wide range of scenarios, from industrial deployment to educational ones. In this paper we give an overview of Larva and give an overview of its extensions and uses.peer-reviewe

EMIL: Extracting Meaning from Inconsistent Language

Developments in formal and computational theories of argumentation reason with inconsistency. Developments in Computational Linguistics extract arguments from large textual corpora. Both developments head in the direction of automated processing and reasoning with inconsistent, linguistic knowledge so as to explain and justify arguments in a humanly accessible form. Yet, there is a gap between the coarse-grained, semi-structured knowledge-bases of computational theories of argumentation and fine-grained, highly-structured inferences from knowledge-bases derived from natural language. We identify several subproblems which must be addressed in order to bridge the gap. We provide a direct semantics for argumentation. It has attractive properties in terms of expressivity and complexity, enables reasoning by cases, and can be more highly structured. For language processing, we work with an existing controlled natural language (CNL), which interfaces with our computational theory of argumentation; the tool processes natural language input, translates them into a form for automated inference engines, outputs argument extensions, then generates natural language statements. The key novel adaptation incorporates the defeasible expression ‘it is usual that’. This is an important, albeit incremental, step to incorporate linguistic expressions of defeasibility. Overall, the novel contribution of the paper is an integrated, end-to-end argumentation system which bridges between automated defeasible reasoning and a natural language interface. Specific novel contributions are the theory of ‘direct semantics’, motivations for our theory, results with respect to the direct semantics, an implementation, experimental results, the tie between the formalisation and the CNL, the introduction into a CNL of a natural language expression of defeasibility, and an ‘engineering’ approach to fine-grained argument analysis

George Orwell´s nineteen eighty-four: The use of language as a vehicle for mind-control

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) discusses the possible consequences of a totalitarian government in a dystopian future. It has been the departure of several investigations and research papers on the influence of language on society. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to determine whether language might be used as a vehicle for mind-control. First, Newspeak will be compared to several controlled natural languages and experimental languages to understand its objective. Second, it will be examined through different linguistic theories. Finally, an answer will be offered to the question of whether thought influences language or whether, on the contrary, language influences thought

A classification of grammar-infused templates for ontology and model verbalisation

Involving domain-experts in the development, maintenance, and use of knowledge organisation systems can be made easier through the introduction of easy-to-use interfaces that are based on natural language. Well resourced languages make use of natural language generation techniques to provide such interfaces. In particular, they often make use of templates combined with computational grammar rules to generate grammatically complex text. However, there is no model of pairing templates and computational grammar rules to ensure suitability for less-resourced languages. These languages require a modular design that ensures grammar detachability so as to allow grammar re-use across domains and applications. In this paper, we present a model and classification scheme for grammar-infused templates suited for less-resourced languages and classify existing systems that make use of them. We have found that of the 15 systems that pair templates and grammar rules, and their 11 distinct template types, 13 have support for detachable grammars

Measuring verb similarity using binary coefficients with application to isiXhosa and isiZulu

Natural Language Processing (NLP) for underresourced languages may benefit from a bootstrapping approach to utilise the sparse resources across closely related languages. This brings afore the question of language similarity, and therewith the question of how to measure that, so as to make informed predictions on potential success of bootstrapping. We present a method for measuring morphosyntactic similarity by developing Context Free Grammars (CFGs) for isiXhosa and isiZulu verb fragments that are relevant for the use case of weather forecast generation. We then investigate morphosyntactic similarity of the CFGs using parse tree analysis and four binary similarity measures. In particular, we selected four binary similarity measures from other domains and adapted them to our data, which are the word sets generated from the respective CFGs. The similarity measures together with the parse tree analysis are used to study the the extent to which both languages can be generated by a singular grammar fragment. The resulting 52 rules for isiXhosa and 49 rules for isiZulu overlap on 42 rules. This supports the existing intuition of similarity, as they are in the same language cluster. The morphosyntactic similarity measured with the binary coefficients reached 59.5% overall (adapted Driver-Kroeber), with 99.5% for the past tense only. This lower score cf. the structure of the CFG is attributable to the small differences in terminals in mainly the prefix of the verb. The parse tree analysis and binary similarity measures show that a modularised set of rules for the prefix, verb root, and suffix would allow the generation of the two languages with a single grammar where only the prefix requires differentiation

A method for measuring verb similarity for two closely related languages with application to Zulu and Xhosa

There are limited computational resources for Nguni languages and when improving availability for one of the languages, bootstrapping from a related language’s resources may be a cost-saving approach. This requires the ability to quantify similarity between any two closely related languages so as to make informed decisions, of which it is unclear how to measure it. We devised a method for quantifying similarity by adapting four extant similar measures, and present a method of quantifying the ratio of verbs that would need phonological conditioning due to consecutive vowels. The verbs selected are those relevant for weather forecasts for Xhosa and Zulu and newly specified as computational grammar rules. The 52 Xhosa and 49 Zulu rules share 42 rules, supporting informal impressions of their similarity. The morphosyntactic similarity reached 59.5% overall on the adapted Driver-Kroeber metric, with past tense rules only at 99.5%. This similarity score is a result of the variation in terminals mainly for the prefix of the verb

Análisis de las percepciones en torno a la práctica de la posedición en el sector profesional de la traducción en España

Programa de Doctorado en Lenguas Modernas, Traducción y Español como Lengua ExtranjeraEl mercado profesional de la traducción se encuentra en constante cambio. Los traductores profesionales deben enfrentarse a un mercado cada vez más globalizado e interconectado gracias a las nuevas tecnologías. Deben afrontar nuevos retos sin apenas tiempo de reacción. El volumen de demanda se incrementa y los plazos de entrega se reducen. Es por ello que la adaptabilidad del traductor cobra más importancia que nunca. El mercado demanda nuevas habilidades que antes no eran inherentes al traductor como, por ejemplo, el dominio de software complejo para la localización de páginas web o la capacidad de posteditar textos generados con traducción automática o de transcrear. A causa de estos cambios constantes en el mercado, es primordial conocer las percepciones de los traductores profesionales respecto a estas nuevas tendencias, para tener una imagen más real de cómo afectan todos estos avances a los profesionales que van a tener que afrontarlas de primera mano. Este proyecto de tesis que aquí presentamos tiene como objetivo principal mostrar cuáles son las percepciones de los traductores profesionales sobre la práctica de la postedición en el sector de la traducción en España. Entre otras cuestiones, pretendemos conocer si los traductores en activo realizan habitualmente este tipo de postediciones o si hay correspondencia entre el mundo académico y el profesional en este ámbito. Asimismo, se pretende conocer la opinión de traductores profesionales en activo relacionada con algunas cuestiones sobre este tema a nivel general.Universidad Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla. Departamento de Filología y TraducciónPostprin