A Controlled Natural Language Interface for Semantic MediaWiki

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A Controlled Natural Language Interface for
Semantic MediaWiki

• Jie Bao
• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• Paul R. Smart, Nigel R. Shadbolt
• University of Southampton
• Dave Braines, Gareth Jones
• IBM UK

ACITA 2009, Sep 23, 2009 University of Maryland
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Motivation

• The timely collection of facts obtained at the
  tactical (and even the interpersonal level) may
  help to create better operational decisions at
  all levels. The goal is to create networks of
  soldiers who are capable of collecting
  information within their sphere of influence and
  who can share this information with other members
  of the net in a timely fashion.
• ---Defense Science Board. 2006 Summer Study
  on 21st Century Strategic Technology Vectors,
  Volume II, Critical Capabilities and Enabling
  Technologies. Office of the Under Secretary of
  Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and
  Logistics, Washington, DC, 2006.

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Motivation
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Key Requirements

• Collaboration Support
• Can be used by a variety of different types of
  contributors
• Supports cross-platform access
• Ease of Use
• Requires least training
• Provides simple user interface
• Content ease to understand
• Meaningful Structure
• Enables some automated processing of data (e.g.,
  automated data propagation)
• Enables discovery of hidden knowledge from
  explicitly known information.

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Enabling Technologies

Every A is B
Controlled Natural Language
Semantic Wiki
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Semantic Wiki
Multi-user content creation and
editing Browser-based, Cross-platform easy to
use Support semantic annotations for automated
processing and inference
Semantic Wiki
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Semantic MediaWiki (SMW)

• It is the most popular semantic wiki system
  extending MediaWiki (the Wikipedias platform)

Mediawiki What you edit
what you see
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Semantic MediaWiki
To author knowledge
SMW What you edit (Modeling Script)
what you see
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Semantic MediaWiki
To retrieve knowledge
SMW What you edit (Querying Script)
what you see
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Challenges

• However, SMW is limited by
• Expressivity constraints
• No support for the full range of RDF/OWL
• E.g., we cant specify that capital of property
  should always link a City to a Country (property
  domain and range)
• Usability
• Thinking in the subject-property-object fashion
  may not be ease (as one may think!)
• Based on our own experiments with entry-level
  users.
• Knowledge engineers may find it difficult to
  understand others contributions.
• Users may prefer different languages styles or
  even different natural languages.

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Challenges

• However, SMW is limited by
• Expressivity constraints
• No support for the full range of RDF/OWL
• E.g., we cant specify that capital of property
  should always link a City to a Country (property
  domain and range)
• Usability
• Thinking in the subject-property-object fashion
  may not be ease (as you may think!)
• Based on our own experiments with entry-level
  users.
• Knowledge engineers may find it difficult to
  understand others contributions.
• Users may prefer different languages styles or
  even different natural languages.

By extending SMW with an OWL Meta-model (introduce
d in details later)
By allowing modeling/representing knowledge using
controlled natural language (CNL)
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Controlled Natural Language
Production of knowledge without using a formal
logic. Potential production and comprehension
benefits Multiple OWL-compliant CNLs are
available e.g. Rabbit, Sydney OWL Syntax, ACE-OWL
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Controlled Natural Language

• Example (In Rabbit syntax)
• The capital of" relationship can only have a
  City" as a subject.
• The "capital of" relationship can only have a
  Country" as an object.

Instead of saying (In OWL Abstract
Syntax) ObjectProperty(excapital_of
domain(exCity) range(exCountry)) Or (In
Description Logics) ?capital_of.T ?City
?capital_of -.T ? Country
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Solution Summary

• Collaboration Support
• Natively collaborative for a wiki
• Web-based interface accessible from any device
  that has a browser.
• Ease of Use
• Simplify knowledge input using semi-automatically
  generated forms
• Multiple OWL-compliant CNLs e.g. Rabbit
  (English, Chinese), ACE-OWL
• Meaningful Structure
• Meta-model do the translation between OWL and
  CNL, and between OWL and SMW scripts
• Query and inference supported.

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Architecture
Prototype system http//tw.rpi.edu/proj/cnl
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SMW OWL Meta Model
OWL Rabbit eats some fresh vegetable
Class(Rabbit partial intersectionOf(animal
restriction(eat someValuesFrom(FreshVegetable)
))
Us wiki templates to create OWL meta-model
extensions for SMW
Form-based editing interface associated with
templates
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OWL Class Templates
Similarly, we have templates for properties and
individuals
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CNL Generation
Use SMW queries to retrieve knowledge statements
in the OWL meta model
vardefinelabelCNL.getLabel1
vardefinesuper ask
1FULLPAGENAME ?Category
mainlabel-formatlistlinknone
if varsuper arraymapvarsuper
,xxxltligtEvery 1!varlabel
is a kind of xxxCNL.getLabelxxx

Construct sentences according to the syntax of
the target CNL
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Multiple CNL Support
Accommodating new CNLs requires relatively minor
changes to the wiki script
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I/O Support

• Allows importing of an RDF/OWL ontology
• Exporting in three CNL syntaxes
• Ontology in the meta-model can be exported in
  RDF.
• Some limitations apply
• Limitation supports for blank nodes
• Datatypes
• Ontology management (e.g. imports)

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Related work

• AceWiki

• Differences
• underlying wiki system
• editing interface
• light-weight extensions
• support for multiple CNLs
• customization of target CNLs

Tobias Kuhn (2008)
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Related work

• ROO

• Differences
• Protégé-based vs. wiki-based
• Rabbit only vs. multiple CNLs
• Formal modeling only vs. formalinformal modeling

Vania Dimitrova et al. 2008
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Summary

• We have developed an OWL meta-model extension to
  SMW to support the representation of OWL
  ontologies
• We have provided a light-weight form-based
  interface to support ontology editing
• We have provided an RDF import mechanism to
  support the import of existing ontologies
• We have developed multiple CNL verbalizers to
  support the serialization of semantic wiki
  content to CNLs
• Future work
• Improved expressvity
• Enable users to create/customize CNL output
• Implement wiki-based CNL editing capability

http//tw.rpi.edu/proj/cnl/