Multilingual Semantic Wiki - Review 2012

---

Multilingual Semantic Wiki

• multilingual
  • multilingual interface for editing and querying
  • synchronized multilingual content
• semantic
  • notions of consistency, entailment, automatic Q&A
• wiki
  • collaborative
  • fast and accessible

Existing background technologies

• Grammatical Framework and its Resource Grammar Library
• Attempto Controlled English (ACE): first-order language with English syntax
• AceWiki

---

Main tasks of WP11

• port the ACE grammar to 15 MOLTO languages (assisted by UGOT)
• develop AceWiki into a multilingual controlled language wiki-system
  • modularize and extend AceWiki
  • integrate existing GF tools for translation and smart text input
• evaluate the new multilingual wiki-system (assisted by UHEL)

---

AceWiki

• goal: user-friendly expressive semantic wiki system
• collaborative editing (web-based tool)
• background reasoning language: OWL
  • expressive fragment of first-order logic
  • decidable reasoning tasks: consistency checking, question answering, ...
  • complex syntax
• front-end language: ACE
  • subset of natural English
  • well-defined translation into first-order logic
  • end-user documentation: construction and interpretation rules
• see more: http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/acewiki/

---

Bidirectional ACE-to-OWL mapping

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
)

---

Article (screenshot)

---

Look-ahead editor (screenshot)

---

Reasoning (screenshot)

---

AceWiki in MOLTO

• preserve the features of the AceWiki
  • controlled natural language
  • Attempto Controlled English
  • notions of consistency, automatic question answering, ...
  • wiki aspects (collaborative editing, multiple interlinked articles)
  • look-ahead editing
• extend AceWiki to be multilingual
  • base the implementation on GF

---

Generalization of AceWiki

• multiple languages
  • natural: English, German, ACE, ...
  • formal: ACE, Sage, ...
  • languages for content, UI, meta information
• multiple grammars
  • ACE (or its subsets)
  • Math Grammar Library
  • Phrasebook
  • ...
• multiple reasoners
  • ACE-based (RACE, OWL-based, ...)
  • math reasoners, e.g. Sage, WolframAlpha
  • ...

---

Multiple languages

• multiple languages for
  • content
  • UI (labels etc.)
  • meta queries (authors, edits)
• the content
  • viewable/editable/queryable in multiple languages
  • automatically kept in sync
• some languages are formal, i.e. they are (mainly) meant for the reasoners
• implemented using Grammatical Framework (GF)
  • single abstract syntax corresponds to multiple concrete syntaxes
  • Resource Grammar Library

(Stable AceWiki: single language: OWL-compatible subset of ACE)

---

Multiple grammars

• different grammars in different sections of the wiki
• interaction between grammars
• support for changing the grammars
  • full grammar editor
  • UI for adding/editing words and their forms
• implemented by integrating multiple GF grammars and a GF editor

(Stable AceWiki: single grammar: OWL-compatible subset of ACE)

---

Multiple reasoners

Syntactic vs semantic reasoning

• syntactic
  • queries over GF trees to answer e.g. "for a given sentence, show me all the syntactically similar sentences"
• semantic (e.g. ACE-based, math reasoning)
  • consistency checking
  • Q&A
  • ...
  • explanation of reasoning results
• implemented by using external reasoning tools

(Stable AceWiki: single reasoner: OWL-reasoner with multiple implementations)

---

Current integration with GF

is based on the GF Webservice and the GF online editor.

• storage is now based on (the language-neutral) abstract trees. (In case of standard AceWiki, the storage is based on ACE.)
• access to multiple grammars (PGF)
• multilingual viewing and editing of wiki content
• look-ahead editing of sentences
• presentation of the GF-analysis of sentences (translations, word alignment diagrams, GF syntax trees, ...)
• preliminary grammar editing using the online GF editor
  • http://cloud.grammaticalframework.org/gfse/
• GF webservice accessed via a new Java API
  • https://github.com/Kaljurand/GF-Java

---

AceWiki and the online GF editor (screenshot)

---

Immediate future work

• structuring the content
  • multiple articles
  • sentence order
• viewing/querying the content
  • dynamic views based on queries over the GF abstract trees

---

ACE in GF

• starting point: Angelov and Ranta (2009)
  • based on ACE v6.0 (early 2009)
  • covers 7 languages (multilinguality via the GF RGL)
  • languages: Eng, Ger, Ita, Swe, Fin, Fre, Urd
• issues with Angelov and Ranta (2009)
  • coverage and precision not perfect with respect to ACE v6.6
  • no AceWiki-oriented subset
  • small number of languages
• new developments (https://github.com/Attempto/ACE-in-GF)
  • minor updates and fixes
  • new AceWiki-oriented subset (less overgeneration in the AceWiki context)
  • work on a precise AceWiki-oriented subset in GF continues as a collaboration between UZH and UGOT

---

Dissemination

• paper or poster at the CNL 2012
  • August 2012 in Zurich, Switzerland
• AceWiki repository on GitHub
  • https://github.com/AceWiki
  • source code history, wiki, issues list
• Attempto mailing list

---