A Proposal of a Language-Based Context-Sensitive Programming System

Toru Sugimoto; Noriko Ito; Shino Iwashita

doi:10.20965/jaciii.2007.p1015

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JACIII Vol.11 No.8 pp. 1015-1022

doi: 10.20965/jaciii.2007.p1015

(2007)

Paper:

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A Proposal of a Language-Based Context-Sensitive Programming System

Toru Sugimoto^, Noriko Ito^, and Shino Iwashita^

^*Faculty of Engineering, Shibaura Institute of Technology, 3-7-5 Toyosu, Koto-ku, Tokyo 135-8548, Japan

^**Faculty of Culture and Information Science, Doshisha University, 1-3 Tatara Miyakodani, Kyotanabe, Kyoto 610-0394, Japan

^***School of Computer Science, Tokyo University of Technology, 1404 Katakura, Hachioji, Tokyo 192-0982, Japan

Received:

March 14, 2007

Accepted:

July 10, 2007

Published:

October 20, 2007

Keywords:

everyday language, context dependency, rhetorical structure, program generation

Abstract

This paper describes a programming system with which even novice users can easily specify complex requests as natural language texts, in other words, write programs in everyday language, to operate computing systems. Based on a study of task specification texts written by non-programmers, the processing model is designed so that implicit and ambiguous information in an input text is detected and transformed into an explicit executable program structure. Context dependency in programming is also considered. Context-dependent factors in the situation of program development and the situation of program execution are considered in text understanding and program execution phases, bridging the gap between these two contexts. We have developed a prototype system that deals with personal email management tasks. In this paper, we explain our processing model, give evaluation results, and discuss our proposal’s effectiveness and projected work.

Cite this article as:

T. Sugimoto, N. Ito, and S. Iwashita, “A Proposal of a Language-Based Context-Sensitive Programming System,” J. Adv. Comput. Intell. Intell. Inform., Vol.11 No.8, pp. 1015-1022, 2007.

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References

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[7] T. Sugimoto, N. Ito, S. Iwashita, and M. Sugeno, “Programming in everyday language: a case for email management,” Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, Vol.18, No.1, pp. 821-829, 2006.
[8] W. Mann and S. A. Thompson, “Rhetorical structure theory: toward a functional theory of text organization,” Text, Vol.8, No.3, pp. 243-281, 1988.
[9] J. F. Pane, C. A. Ratanamahatana, and B. A. Myers, “Studying the language and structure in non-programmers’ solutions to programming problems,” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Vol.54, No.2, pp. 237-264, 2001.
[10] N. Ito, T. Sugimoto, Y. Takahashi, S. Iwashita, and M. Sugeno, “Computational models of language within context and contextsensitive language understanding,” Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, Vol.18, No.1, pp. 782-790, 2006.
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[14] S. Williams, “Dialogue management in a mixed-initiative, cooperative, spoken language system,” Proc. the 11th Twente Workshop on Language Technology, 1996.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationa License.

[1] [1] J. F. Allen, D. K. Byron, M. Dzikovska, G. Ferguson, L. Galescu, and A. Stent, “Towards conversational human-computer interaction,” AI Magazine, Vol.22, No.4, pp. 27-38, 2001.

[2] [2] J. Chu-Carroll, “MIMIC: An adaptive mixed initiative spoken dialogue system for information queries,” Proc. the 6th ACL Conf. on Applied Natural Language Processing, pp. 97-104, 2000.

[3] [3] A. W. Biermann, B. W. Ballard, and A. H. Sigmon, “An experimental study of natural language programming,” Int. Journal of Man-Machine Studies, Vol.18, No.1, pp. 71-87, 1983.

[4] [4] K. Sugiyama, M. Kameda, K. Akiyama, and A. Makinouchi, “Understanding of Japanese in an interactive programming system,” Proc. the 10th Int. Conf. on Computational Linguistics, pp. 385-388, 1984.

[5] [5] D. D. Dankel, M. S. Schmalz, and K. S. Nielsen, “Understanding natural language software specifications,” Proc. the 14th Int. Avignon Conf., pp. 25-34, 1994.

[6] [6] D. Price, E. Riloff, J. Zachary, and B. Harvey, “NaturalJava: a natural language interface for programming in Java,” Proc. the 2000 Int. Conf. on Intelligent User Interfaces, pp. 207-211, 2000.

[7] [7] T. Sugimoto, N. Ito, S. Iwashita, and M. Sugeno, “Programming in everyday language: a case for email management,” Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, Vol.18, No.1, pp. 821-829, 2006.

[8] [8] W. Mann and S. A. Thompson, “Rhetorical structure theory: toward a functional theory of text organization,” Text, Vol.8, No.3, pp. 243-281, 1988.

[9] [9] J. F. Pane, C. A. Ratanamahatana, and B. A. Myers, “Studying the language and structure in non-programmers’ solutions to programming problems,” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Vol.54, No.2, pp. 237-264, 2001.

[10] [10] N. Ito, T. Sugimoto, Y. Takahashi, S. Iwashita, and M. Sugeno, “Computational models of language within context and contextsensitive language understanding,” Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, Vol.18, No.1, pp. 782-790, 2006.

[11] [11] M. A. K. Halliday and C. M. I. M. Matthiessen, “An introduction to functional grammar,” Third edition, Arnold, London, 2004.

[12] [12] D. Marcu, “The theory and practice of discourse parsing and summarization,” MIT Press, 2000.

[13] [13] P. Graham, “Better Bayesian filtering,” Proc. the 2003 Spam Conf., 2003.

[14] [14] S. Williams, “Dialogue management in a mixed-initiative, cooperative, spoken language system,” Proc. the 11th Twente Workshop on Language Technology, 1996.

A Proposal of a Language-Based Context-Sensitive Programming System

Toru Sugimoto*, Noriko Ito**, and Shino Iwashita***

Toru Sugimoto^, Noriko Ito^, and Shino Iwashita^