Anne Condamines

Linguistic Analysis of Requirements of a Space Project and Their Conformity with the Recommendations Proposed by a Controlled Natural Language

The long term aim of the project carried out by the French National Space Agency (CNES) is to design a writing guide based on the real and regular writing of requirements. As a first step in the project, this paper proposes a linguistic analysis of requirements written in French by CNES engineers. The aim is to determine to what extent they conform to two rules laid down in INCOSE, a recent guide for writing requirements. Although CNES engineers are not obliged to follow any Controlled Natural Language in their writing of requirements, we believe that language regularities are likely to emerge from this task, mainly due to the writers’ experience. The issue is approached using natural language processing tools to identify sentences that do not comply with INCOSE rules. We further review these sentences to understand why the recommendations cannot (or should not) always be applied when specifying largescale projects.

Towards the creation of a CNL adapted to requirements writing by combining writing recommendations and spontaneous regularities: example in a space project

The Quality Department of the French National Space Agency (CNES, Centre National d’Études Spatiales) wishes to design a writing guide based on the real and regular writing of requirements. As a first step in this project, the present article proposes a linguistic analysis of requirements written in French by CNES engineers. One of our goals is to determine to what extent they conform to several rules laid down in two existing Controlled Natural Languages (CNLs), namely the Simplified Technical English developed by the AeroSpace and Defense Industries Association of Europe and the Guide for Writing Requirements proposed by the International Council on Systems Engineering. Indeed, although CNES engineers are not obliged to follow any controlled language in their writing of requirements, we believe that language regularities are likely to emerge from this task, mainly due to the writers’ experience. We are seeking to identify these regularities in order to use them as a basis for a new CNL for the writing of requirements. The issue is approached using natural language processing tools to identify sentences that do not comply with the rules or contain specific linguistic phenomena. We further review these sentences to understand why the recommendations cannot (or should not) always be applied when specifying large-scale projects.

Takinggenreinto account when analysing conceptual relation patterns

This paper uses a corpus study to investigate the influence of text genre on the frequency and semantic interpretation of certain pattern/concept relations. In linking pattern/concept relations to text genre, this study identifies three types of dependency: weak dependency, where the relation appears in almost any kind of text; complete dependency, where it is strongly linked to a particular text or group of related texts; and dependency in terms of text genre. The particular examples that form the basis of the study are meronymic chez, which is found to have a significant dependency in didactic texts in the natural sciences; comme as a marker of hypernymy and co-hyponymy, which has a weaker, but observable dependency in technical and didactic genres; nominal anaphora involving hypernyms, where no consistent conclusions can be reached; and meronymic avec, where the significant factor is shown to be communicative objective rather than domain (subject matter). I discuss the relevance of such studies to Natu...

Improving Requirement Boilerplates Using Sequential Pattern Mining

In the field of requirements engineering, the use of the so-called boilerplates (i.e. standard phrases and sentences containing gaps to be filled in) is a popular solution to reduce variation among requirements and writers, and thus to improve the clarity of technical specifications. However, the examples of boilerplates found in the literature are often very general, as they need to be applicable to projects as varied as computer software and aircraft or industrial machines. As a result, they only partially fulfill their role, leaving a lot of freedom to the writers in charge of filling in the gaps. Instead, we would like to propose a bottom-up approach for discovering more specific sequences that could constitute either boilerplates or elements to instantiate these boilerplates. To this end, we investigate whether sequential data mining techniques can be used on a small corpus of genuine requirements written in French at CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), the French Space Agency.

To What Extent Does Text Simplification Entail a More Optimized Comprehension in Human-Oriented CNLs?

The aim of this study is to develop a new cockpit controlled language for future Airbus aircraft by using psycholinguistic testing to optimize pilot comprehension. Pilots are aided by cockpit messages in order to deal with different situations during aircraft operations. The current controlled languages used on the Airbus aircraft have been carefully constructed to avoid ambiguity, inaccuracy, inconsistency, and inadequacy [21] in order to ensure the safety of the navigation, operational needs, and the adaptability of the human-computer interaction to different situations in the cockpit. However, this controlled language has several limitations, mostly due to small screen sizes limited number of words and sentences and is highly codified non-conforming to natural language syntax, color-coded, etc. so that it requires prior pilot training in order to achieve fluency. As future cockpit design is under construction, we might be looking at a different flexibility margin: less limitations, different screen sizes, less coding, etc.