Formalised English

Formalised-English (FE) is an English-oriented notation for first-order logic with contexts (meta-statements) and sets. It is therefore a controlled language but probably the most expressive and ugliest one (this unfortunately more or less goes together). FE is one of the notations accepted by the WebKB knowledge servers (essentially in WebKB-1 since its implementation is not yet complete in WebKB-2). Its rationale and features (as well as those of the other notations of WebKB) are presented via a comparison to KIF and the Conceptual Graph Linear Form in our ICCS 2002 article, and this comparison has been extended to UML and RDF+OWL in 2003. It has also been described in Jonathan Pool's comparison of Controlled Languages.

Here are descriptions of the grammar of the FE accepted by WebKB-1:   EBNF,   Yacc,   Lex

Here are some test files accepted by WebKB-1:   test file 1,   test file 2   and
test file 3 (Jonathan Pool's test sentences for evaluating controlled languages in FE).
You can also select the "testing the Formalized English" option in this menu.



Dr. Philippe A. MARTIN