Controlling controlled English

Controlling Controlled English An Analysis of Several Controlled Language Rule Sets Sharon O’Brien School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies Dublin City University Dublin 9, Ireland sharon.obrien@dcu.ie Abstract This paper presents the results of an analysis of eight Controlled English rule sets. The objective of this analysis was to discover the extent to which Controlled Language rule sets shared common rules and to try to establish a core set of CL rules for English. The analysis reveals that, although there is some commonality of rules across some rule sets, all eight CL rule sets have but one rule in common. Therefore, it is not possible to derive a core set of CL rules for English from this analysis. The lack of a core rule set makes it difficult for organisations who want to implement CL without rein- venting the wheel. The author provides a suggestion for the most important rules for controlling English, based on the common rules across the eight CLs analysed here. 1 Introduction In this paper the rules of eight Controlled Eng- lish rule sets are analysed from the point of view of types of rules and commonality of rules. The objective of this analysis is to find answers to the following ques- tions: �� Do Controlled Languages (CLs) in a specific natural language (e.g. English) share common rules and, if so, to what extent? �� Can a core set of Controlled English rules be established from this analysis? A core set of Controlled English rules would be useful for any individual or organisation that is getting started with implementing Controlled English. Section 1 gives details of the rule sets included in the analysis. The methodology for rule classification and sub-classification is discussed in Section 2. The linguistic phenomena governed by rules are explored in Section 3. Findings from the rule analysis are presented in Section 4, where the topics of rule completeness, commonality, and uniqueness are examined. Finally, section 5 summarises the findings and presents answers to the questions asked above. 2 Obtaining the Rule Sets To obtain rule sets, requests were sent to organisa- tions known to be using Controlled English. Sixteen organisations in total were contacted. Responses to this request varied from being very positive, where rule sets were sent immediately, to negative, where the answer was negative or there was no answer at all. A total of eight Controlled English rule sets were included in the analysis: 1 �� AECMA Simplified English (SE) �� Attempto Controlled English �� Alcatel’s COGRAM �� IBM’s Easy English �� GM’s CASL �� Océ’s Controlled English �� Sun Microsystem’s Controlled English �� Avaya’s Controlled English. Of the eight, only AECMA SE is classified as a Human-Oriented Controlled Language (HOCL)2. The remaining seven have been classified as Machine- Oriented Controlled Languages (MOCLs). AECMA SE’s objective is clearly different from the other seven 1 For space reasons, it is not possible to provide a description of each of the CLs mentioned here. However, papers describ- ing these CLs are included …

Content truncated to 500 words