Natural Language Template Selection for Temporal Constraints

Representing temporal knowledge and information in temporal logics for ontologies and conceptual data models has faced issues due to inaccessibility of the underlying logic and limited intuitiveness of diagrammatic extensions to the modelling languages. We aim to address this by designing controlled natural language templates for generating sentences that verbalise in English the temporal constraints defined in a temporal logic. We devised 101 templates, which were evaluated by experts in temporal logics and by novice temporal modellers on semantic adequacy and preference. There was only 12% unanimity among the experts, and 89% by majority voting. The novice temporal modellers were much more lenient in judgment on whether the templates captured the semantics adequately. Instead of a direct 1:1 mapping between an axiom’s components and the natural language rendering, the more natural-sounding sentences were preferred, therewith linking an axiom type as a whole to a template.