Prerequisites to Deriving Formal Specifications from Natural Language Requirements.
Abstract
Since English specifications and formal specifications of modules are complementary and since formal specifications require so much effort to write, our work is investigating application of artificial intelligence techniques to aid in the software specification process. The first area studied is comparing English descriptions with formal specifications of the same software module. This work is now complete; however, some of the examples will continue to serve as a guide to the software tool being constructed. The second area is suggesting modifications to formal specification languages, which would make them more understandable. In particular, we have been suggesting alternatives to logical quantifiers. The third and fourth areas deal with the syntactic and semantic components of an experimental software tool. Its purpose is to test our solutions to a handful of problems in transforming English descriptions to formal specifications under significant user assistance. In dealing with syntactic ambiguity, one of the solutions that many have spectulated about is the use of a semantic component to reject anomolous parses; we intend to test its effectiveness using the RUS grammar. When ambiguity is not resolved, questions must be presented to the user for his/her selection of the intended interpretation. Partial heuristics for this are part of the results of this year's effort. In addition, modification of the RUS parser and dictionary for the domain of software specification will continue during the next year.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 1981
- Accession Number
- ADA108612
Entities
People
- Ralph M. Weischedel
Organizations
- University of Delaware