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Deriving time lines from texts

Published: 03 June 2014 Publication History

Abstract

We investigate natural language as an alternative to programming languages. Natural language would empower anyone to program with minimal training. In this paper, we solve an ordering problem that arises in natural-language programming. An emprical study showed that users do not always provide the strict sequential order of steps needed for execution on a computer. Instead, temporal expressions involving "before", "after", "while", "at the end", and others are used to indicate an order other than the textual one. We present an analysis that extracts the intended time line by exploiting temporal clues. The technique is analyzed in the context of Alice, a 3D programming environment, and AliceNLP, a system for programming Alice in ordinary English. Extracting temporal order could also be useful for analyzing reports, question answering, help desk requests, and big data applications.

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cover image ACM Conferences
RAISE 2014: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Realizing Artificial Intelligence Synergies in Software Engineering
June 2014
58 pages
ISBN:9781450328463
DOI:10.1145/2593801
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 03 June 2014

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Author Tags

  1. Alice
  2. Natural language processing
  3. end-user programming
  4. programming with natural language
  5. temporal expressions
  6. temporal reasoning
  7. time lines

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  • (2019)A Model for Naturalistic Programming with ImplementationApplied Sciences10.3390/app91839369:18(3936)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2019
  • (2017)A Survey of Naturalistic Programming TechnologiesACM Computing Surveys10.1145/310948150:5(1-35)Online publication date: 26-Sep-2017
  • (2017)NLCIAutomated Software Engineering10.1007/s10515-016-0202-124:4(839-861)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2017
  • (2015)Text understanding for programming in natural languageProceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on Realizing Artificial Intelligence Synergies in Software Engineering10.5555/2820668.2820671(7-12)Online publication date: 16-May-2015
  • (2015)ProNatProceedings of the 37th International Conference on Software Engineering - Volume 210.5555/2819009.2819183(819-820)Online publication date: 16-May-2015

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