Editing Controlled natural language (section)

{{short description|Subset of a natural language}}
'''Controlled natural languages''' ('''CNLs''') are subsets of [[natural language]]s that are obtained by restricting the grammar and vocabulary in order to reduce or eliminate [[ambiguity]] and complexity. Traditionally, controlled languages fall into two major types: those that improve readability for human readers (e.g. non-native speakers),
and those that enable reliable automatic [[Semantic analysis (linguistics)|semantic analysis]] of the language.<ref>{{Cite web |title=A Survey and Classification of Controlled Natural Languages |url=https://direct.mit.edu/coli/article/40/1/121/1455/A-Survey-and-Classification-of-Controlled-Natural |access-date=2024-03-27 |website=direct.mit.edu}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Controlled Natural Languages for language generation in artificial cognition |url=https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6907843 |access-date=2024-03-27 |website=[[IEEE]]}}</ref>

The first type of languages (often called "simplified" or "technical" languages), for example [[ASD Simplified Technical English]], Caterpillar Technical English, [[IBM]]'s Easy English, are used in the industry to increase the quality of technical documentation, and possibly simplify the [[Computer-assisted translation|semi-automatic translation]] of the documentation. These languages restrict the writer by general rules such as "Keep sentences short", "Avoid the use of [[pronoun]]s", "Only use dictionary-approved words", and "Use only the [[active voice]]".<ref>{{cite conference |url=http://www.mt-archive.info/CLT-2003-Obrien.pdf |title=Controlling Controlled English – An Analysis of Several Controlled Language Rule Sets |first=Sharon |last=O'Brien |year=2003 |book-title=Proceedings of EAMT-CLAW |access-date=2011-12-30 |archive-date=2016-03-03 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303181833/http://www.mt-archive.info/CLT-2003-Obrien.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>

The second type of languages have a formal syntax and [[formal semantics (natural language)|formal semantics]], and can be mapped to an existing [[formal language]], such as [[first-order logic]]. Thus, those languages can be used as [[knowledge representation language]]s,<ref>Schwitter, Rolf. "[http://staff.um.edu.mt/mros1/cnl2010/TALKS/schwitter_tutorial.pdf Controlled natural languages for knowledge representation]." Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Computational Linguistics: Posters. Association for Computational Linguistics, 2010.</ref> and writing of those languages is supported by fully automatic [[consistency]] and redundancy checks, [[query answering]], etc.