We describe a semantic wiki system with an underlying controlled natural language grammar implemented in Grammatical Framework (GF). The grammar restricts the wiki content to a well-defined subset of Attempto Controlled English (ACE), and facilitates a precise bidirectional automatic translation between ACE and language fragments of a number of other natural languages, making the wiki content accessible multilingually. Additionally, our approach allows for automatic translation into the Web Ontology Language (OWL), which enables automatic reasoning over the wiki content. The developed wiki environment thus allows users to build, query and view OWL knowledge bases via a user-friendly multilingual natural language interface. As a further feature, the underlying multilingual grammar is integrated into the wiki and can be collaboratively edited to extend the vocabulary of the wiki or even customize its sentence structures. This work demonstrates the combination of the existing technologies of Attempto Controlled English and Grammatical Framework, and is implemented as an extension of the existing semantic wiki engine AceWiki.
Abstract: In this paper we motivate why it is crucial to associate linguistic information with ontologies and why more expressive models, beyond the label systems implemented in RDF, OWL and SKOS, are needed to capture the relation between natural language constructs and ontological structures. We argue that in the light of tasks such as ontology-based information extraction (i.e., ontology population) from text, ontology learning from text, knowledge-based question answering and ontology verbalization, currently available models do not suffice as they only allow us to associate literals as labels to ontology elements. Using literals as labels, however, does not allow us to capture additional linguistic structure or information which is definitely needed as we argue. In this paper we thus present a model for linguistic grounding of ontologies called LexInfo. LexInfo allows us to associate linguistic information to elements in an ontology with respect to any level of linguistic description and expressivity. LexInfo has been implemented as an OWL ontology and is freely available together with an API. Our main contribution is the model itself, but even more importantly a clear motivation why more elaborate models for associating linguistic information with ontologies are needed. We also further discuss the implementation of the LexInfo API, different tools that support the creation of LexInfo lexicons as well as some preliminary applications. This paper presents an approach to multilingual ontology verbalisation of controlled language based on the Grammatical Framework (GF) and the lemon model. It addresses specific challenges that arise when classes are used to create a consensus-based conceptual framework, in which many parties individually contribute instances. The approach is presented alongside a concrete case, in which ontologies are used to capture business processes by linguistically untrained stakeholders across business disciplines. GF is used to create multilingual grammars that enable transparent multilingual verbalisation. Capturing the instance labels in lemon lexicons reduces the need for GF engineering to the class level: The lemon lexicons with the labels of the instances are converted into GF grammars based on a mapping described in this paper. The grammars are modularised in accordance with the ontology modularisation and can deal with the different styles of label choosing that occur in practice.