1. 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

2. 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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3. Motivation
Intelligent
Agents/Assistants
Analysts Patrols / Field Reports
Remote
Sensors
Shared
Repository
Multinational Planning
Teams
Unmanned Vehicles
Military Platforms Non - Military
Organizations
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4. 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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5. Enabling Technologies
+
Every
A is B …
Semantic Controlled
Wiki Natural
Language
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6. Semantic Wiki
Multi-user content
creation and editing
Browser-based,
Cross-platform
easy to use
Semantic Support semantic
annotations for
Wiki automated processing
and inference

7. Semantic MediaWiki (SMW)
• It is the most popular semantic wiki system
extending MediaWiki (the Wikipedia’s platform)
Mediawiki: What you edit what you see
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8. Semantic MediaWiki
To author knowledge
typed link (property)
SMW: What you edit what you see
(Modeling Script)
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9. Semantic MediaWiki
To retrieve knowledge
SMW: What you edit what you see
(Querying Script)
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10. Challenges
However, SMW is limited by
 Expressivity constraints
• No support for the full range of RDF/OWL
• E.g., we can’t 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 other’s
contributions.
• Users may prefer different languages styles or even different
natural languages.

11. Challenges
However, SMW is limited by
 Expressivity constraints
• No support for the full range of RDF/OWL
By extending SMW with an
• E.g., we can’t specify that “capital of” property should always link
OWL Meta-model
a City to a Country (property domain and range)
(introduced in details later)
 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.
By allowing modeling/representing knowledge
• Knowledge engineers may find it difficult to (CNL)
using controlled natural language understand other’s
contributions.
• Users may prefer different languages styles or even different
natural languages.

12. Controlled Natural Language
Production of knowledge
without using a formal logic.
Every
A is B…
Potential production and
comprehension benefits
Multiple OWL-compliant
CNLs are available: CNL
e.g. Rabbit, Sydney OWL
Syntax, ACE-OWL

13. 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(ex:capital_of
domain(ex:City) range(ex:Country))
Or (In Description Logics)
∀capital_of.T ⊆City
∀capital_of -.T ⊆ Country
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14. 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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15. Architecture
Form Editor CNL Editing RDF Export
CNL Interface
Interface Interface Interface
CNLG
Module
RDF Export
Wiki Database
RDF Import Semantic Query
Interface
SELECT ?x
WHERE
{
?x rdf:typeowl:Class
RDF Model
}
Prototype system: http://tw.rpi.edu/proj/cnl

16. SMW OWL Meta Model
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Class(Rabbit partial intersectionOf(animal OWL: “Rabbit eats
restriction(eat someValuesFrom(FreshVegetable))) some fresh vegetable”
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Form-based editing Us wiki templates to
interface associated create OWL meta-model
with templates extensions for SMW

17. OWL Class Templates
Similarly, we have templates for properties and individuals
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18. CNL Generation
Use SMW queries to retrieve knowledge statements in the OWL meta
model
{{#vardefine:label|{{CNL.getLabel|{{{1}}} }} }}
{{#vardefine:super |
{{#ask: [[:{{{1|{{FULLPAGENAME}}}}}]]
|?Category= |mainlabel=-|format=list|link=none }}
}}
Construct sentences according to the syntax of the target CNL
{{#if: {{#var:super}}
|{{#arraymap:{{#var:super}}|,|xxx|<li>Every
[[:{{{1}}}{{!}}{{#var:label}}]] is a kind of
[[:xxx|{{CNL.getLabel|xxx}}]] }}|}}

19. Multiple CNL Support
Accommodating new CNLs requires relatively minor changes to the wiki script

20. 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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21. 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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22. Related work
ROO
Differences:
• Protégé-based vs. wiki-
based
• Rabbit only vs. multiple
CNLs
• Formal modeling only vs.
formal+informal modeling
Vania Dimitrova et al. 2008
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23. 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/
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