Q: Controlled languages (+R:)

Tue Apr 13 11:53:06 UTC 1999

    ================================================================
    1/Date: Tue, 06 Apr 1999 20:57:05 +0200
    From: Jeff ALLEN <jeff at elda.fr>
    Subject: Q: Definitions of controlled languages
    ================================================================
    2/Date: Tue, 06 Apr 1999 21:06:30 +0200
    From: Jeff ALLEN <jeff at elda.fr>
    Subject: Q: Percentages - Controlled Language documents/presentations
    ================================================================
    3/Date: Wed, 07 Apr 1999 09:28:11 +0200
    From: Pim van der Eijk <pim.vander.eijk at capgemini.nl>
    Subject: Re: definitions of controlled languages
    ================================================================

================================================================
1/Date: Tue, 06 Apr 1999 20:57:05 +0200
From: Jeff ALLEN <jeff at elda.fr>
Message-Id: <4.0.1.19990406202255.00fe4a10 at 192.168.1.1>

I am particularly interested in compiling a list of definitions
of the terms "Controlled Language" and "Sub-language".   Since there
are potentially different interpretations of these terms, I invite replies
from people of different fields of interest.

I would appreciate your replies on how you would
define these terms.

Please send replies to me directly at <jeff at elda.fr>

A summary of responses will be posted later.

Thanks in advance.

Jeff Allen
<jeff at elda.fr>

=================================================
Jeff ALLEN - Directeur Technique
European Language Resources Association (ELRA)  &
European Language resources Distribution Agency (ELDA)
(Agence Européenne de Distribution des Ressources Linguistiques)
55, rue Brillat-Savarin
75013   Paris   FRANCE
Tel: (+33) 1.43.13.33.33 - Fax: (+33) 1.43.13.33.30
mailto:jeff at elda.fr
http://www.icp.grenet.fr/ELRA/home.html

================================================================
2/Date: Tue, 06 Apr 1999 21:06:30 +0200
From: Jeff ALLEN <jeff at elda.fr>
Message-Id: <4.0.1.19990406201502.00fec100 at 192.168.1.1>

This is a short survey:
I would like to know in which languages different articles,
papers, theses, dissertations, have been
written/presented on the subject of Controlled
Languages / Sublanguages.

Please provide the following general information in replies:

1. language name(s) in which the information on Controlled
Languages / Sublanguages has been conveyed;

2. the _approximate_ percentage of documents/presentations
on Controlled Languages/Sublanguages that you have read/
heard in this/(each of these) language(s);

3. please differentiate between documents/presentations that
are publicly accessible (published, available on the Internet)
and those that are not (e.g., internal company documents,
company meetings).  No details are necessary, just
approximate percentages.

For example:

Publicly available:
Language X: 50%
Language Y: 20%
Language Z: 30%

Not publicly available:
Language X: 75%
Language Y: 25%

If you wish to indicate the _approximate_ number
of reports/papers/presentation per  public and
non-public categories, it would be greatly
appreciated but is not necessary.

Please send replies to me directly at <jeff at elda.fr>

Many thanks in advance.

Jeff Allen
<jeff at elda.fr>

=================================================
Jeff ALLEN - Directeur Technique
European Language Resources Association (ELRA)  &
European Language resources Distribution Agency (ELDA)
(Agence Européenne de Distribution des Ressources Linguistiques)
55, rue Brillat-Savarin
75013   Paris   FRANCE
Tel: (+33) 1.43.13.33.33 - Fax: (+33) 1.43.13.33.30
mailto:jeff at elda.fr
http://www.icp.grenet.fr/ELRA/home.html

================================================================
3/Date: Wed, 07 Apr 1999 09:28:11 +0200
From: Pim van der Eijk <pim.vander.eijk at capgemini.nl>
Subject: Re: definitions of controlled languages
Message-Id: <s70b2545.007 at inetgate.capgemini.nl>

Colleagues and I have used the distinctions "natural" versus
"artificial", and "descriptive" versus "prescriptive" to differentiate
sublanguage from controlled language (see e.g. our CLAW 96 paper).

There is an extensive literature (mostly from the 80s, but still very
useful today) on sublanguages that discuss methods to perform
sublanguage analysis. You can apply these and other (e.g. terminology,
corpus studies) methods to a particular set of documents, e.g. the
technical documentation of a particular company.  You may then find
(in lexicon analysis) that in a particular domain a concept is
expressed using words A and B, and that word C is used to express two
distinct concepts, which are unambiguously expressed using words D or
E.

Separately from this, an analysis of that company's business needs may
show that the existing sublanguage practice needs to be changed, for
instance to accomodate quality requirements of their customers (such
as improving consistency or reducing ambiguity), to improve
reusability of documentation modules, or because the company wants to
use an MT system that has limitations that need to be worked around.

In a controlled language, you want to translate these requirements
into explicit guidelines that authors and editors can take into
account. For instance, you may propose that authors should always use
"B" and no longer use "A", or that "D" or "E" should be used instead
of "C".  Some of these guidelines can be stated explicitly and
formally, so that they can be machine-checked.  A problem with many
controlled language specifications is that although they are defined
rather formally, they are defined in reference to a sublanguage or to
general language which itself is not described formally (or is too
vast to describe).

Note that this refers to the use of "controlled language" in technical
documentation applications as a kind of "controlled sublanguages".
There is a (very different) use of controlled language for formal
specification, command and control applications etc. These controlled
languages are very different because there is no existing sublanguage
and because they can be very different syntactically from standard
language.

================================================================