SECLIPS: A Structured English Interface for an Expert System Shell

This paper describes the SECLIPS system, which provides a restricted English grammar and vocabulary designed to express the facts and rules of a rules-based knowledge base. SECLIPS is an extension of ECLIPS and allows the user to extend a core vocabulary to express a knowledge base of facts and rules for a particular problem domain. SECLIPS employs an LL(1) based translator with the grammar for the restricted English SECLIPS language to perform a translation to the CLIPS expert system language. SECLIPS extends ECLIPS by supporting negative predicates and modifiers, plural verbs, and list structures. SECLIPS provides a mechanism by which knowledge can be expressed in a readable format and translated into a CLIPS format with a readily apparent correspondence between the SECLIPS input and the CLIPS output.