In Software and Knowledge Engineering the objects to be designed are usually of a rather technical nature, certainly in the past. As computer applications are becoming part of daily life, these objects become more and more common. That means that the semantics of these objects can be described in ordinary natural language and chances are high that these semantics have been defined by linguists in dictionaries for the large collections of common words and in lexicons for special areas (like the medical world). Obviously then the question can be posed: can Software and Knowledge Engineering profit from these dictionaries and lexicons. An important part of the lecture is about this question and we will show that a certain linguistic theory: Functional Grammar is a very useful tool. Also we will show, how WordNet can profitably be used in this area, in particular when Information-Systems are to be designed. For validation purposes natural language can be used very well as a communication means between the software engineer and the customer. This may work in two ways: input in the form of (structured) natural language sentences which are analyzed and automatically transformed in formal diagrams (such as ERJ diagrams) and as output to show the customer the meaning of such diagrams in a more natural user-friendly form. This will constitute the second part of the lecture.
Speaker: Prof. Reind P. van de Riet Department of Mathematics and Computer Science Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam When: Tuesday, 19 th of March 2002, 10:00 am (s.t) Where: E.2.42, University Klagenfurt