From Contract Drafting to Software Specification: Linguistic Sources of Ambiguity

16 февраля, в 16:00 по Москве на очередном исследовательском семинаре об искусственном интеллекте и тестировании. Елена Трещева и Дарья Дегтяренко представят научную работу «От составления контракта до спецификации программного обеспечения: Языковые источники неоднозначности».
На семинаре мы:
-рассмотрим подробную классификацию типов неоднозначности, которой склонны обладать тексты, написанные на естественном языке,
вместе проанализируем много примеров неоднозначности, а также
-поговорим о конкретных рекомендациях по снижению степени неоднозначности в текстах спецификаций и контрактов.
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Transcript

1. Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com From Contract Drafting to Software Specification: Linguistic Sources of Ambiguity A Handbook Version 1.0
2. 2 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com Daniel M. Berry, Ph.D. Computer Science University of Waterloo, Canada Erik Kamsties, Ph.D. Computer Science University of Essen, Germany Michael M. Krieger, Ph.D. Mathematics, J.D. University of California, Los Angeles Meet the Authors
3. 3 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com "Please press ANY key to continue..."
4. 4 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com Don Gause lists the five most important sources of requirements failure as: - failure to effectively manage conflict, - lack of clear statement of the design problem to be solved, - too much unrecognized disambiguation, - not knowing who is responsible for what, and - lack of awareness of requirements risk. 1 Intro
5. 5 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com Linguistics vs Pragmatics –“Interestingly, correct use of the natural language eliminates most of the ambiguities”. Two people who know the rules well or two people who don’t know the rules well tend to communicate well. BUT! But one person who knows the rules well and one person who doesn’t tend to communicate poorly. → Pragmatic Ambiguity
6. 6 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com 2 Commonalities and Differences 1. the requirement to be precise and accurate, to be self-consistent, and to anticipate all possible contingencies, and 2. the fact that most such documents are written mostly in natural language. Beyond these commonalities there are commonalities and differences in the contents and structure of the documents and in the processes by which the documents are generated and maintained. There are commonalities and differences in how the documents are generated and maintained.
7. 7 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com Four Classes of Linguistic Ambiguity Lexical ambiguity Syntactic ambiguity Semantic ambiguity Pragmatic ambiguity
8. 8 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com 3.3.1 Lexical Ambiguity Lexical ambiguity – a word has several meanings. Homonymy – different words have the same written and phonetic representation, but unrelated meanings and different etymologies, i.e., different histories of development. Bank (riverside, financial institution), dull (boring, idle), etc. Polysemy – a word has several related meanings but one etymology. Systematic polysemy occurs when the reason for the polysemy is confusion between classes, e.g., between unit and type, and between process and product [16]. Unit-vs.-type ambiguity - I like this jacket. Process-vs.-product ambiguity occurs with everyday words like building, shot, and writing. Behavior-vs.-disposition ambiguity. - This is a fast car.
9. 9 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com 3.3.2 Syntactic Ambiguity Syntactic ambiguity, also called structural ambiguity, occurs when a given sequence of words can be given more than one grammatical structure = a sentence has more than one parse. 1. Analytical ambiguity occurs when the role of the constituents within a phrase or sentence is ambiguous. The Tibetan history teacher. 2. Attachment ambiguity occurs when a particular syntactic constituent of a sentence, such as a prepositional phrase or a relative clause, can be legally attached to two parts of a sentence. The police shot the rioters with guns.
10. 10 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com Syntactic Ambiguity (c’ed) 3. Coordination ambiguity occurs 1. when more than one conjunction, and or or, is used in a sentence (I saw Peter and Paul and Mary) or 2. when one conjunction is used with a modifier (young man and woman). 4. Elliptical ambiguity occurs when it is not certain whether or not a sentence contains an ellipsis. Perot knows a richer man than Trump.
11. 11 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com 3.3.3 Semantic Ambiguity Semantic ambiguity – a sentence has more than one way of reading it within its context although it contains no lexical or structural ambiguity. Ambiguity with respect to the logical form, usually expressed in predicate logic, of a sentence. Semantic ambiguity can be caused by: 1. coordination ambiguity, 2. referential ambiguity, and 3. scope ambiguity. Scope ambiguity The quantifier operators include such words as every, each, all, some, several, a, etc., and the negation operators include not. All linguists prefer a theory. No one has seen a pig with wings.
12. 12 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com 3.3.4 Pragmatic Ambiguity Pragmatics is the study of the relations between language and context. Referential ambiguity The trucks shall treat the roads before they freeze. Ellipsis ... If the ATM accepts the card, the user enters the PIN. If not, the card is rejected. Deictic ambiguity Every student thinks she is a genius.
13. 13 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com 3.3.5 Vagueness and Generality Generality Sue is visiting her cousin. We finally reached the bank. Vagueness A requirement is vague if it is not clear how to measure whether the requirement is fulfilled or not. A non-functional requirement, e.g., fast response time, is often vague, because there is no precise way of describing and measuring it, short of arbitrary quantification, which leaves us wondering if the essence of the requirements have been captured. The only difference between vagueness and generality is the existence of borderline cases.
14. 14 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com 3.3.6 Language Error A language error ambiguity occurs when a grammatical, punctuation, word choice, or other mistake in using the language of discourse leads to text that is interpreted by a receiver as having a meaning other than that intended by the sender. Every light has their switch. Everybody brings their lunch. All lights have their switch. All lights share their switch. Each light has its own switch.
15. 15 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com Interim summary - Section 1 - Intro & nature and sources of ambiguity - Section 2 - Requirements vs legal texts - Section 3 - Types of ambiguity: Linguistic ambiguity Generality and vagueness Syntactic ambiguity Semantic ambiguity Pragmatic ambiguity Lexical ambiguity Language error
16. 16 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com 4 - Techniques for Dealing with Ambiguity Three groups according to the requirements engineering activities: - Requirements elicitation - Requirements documentation - Requirements validation
17. 17 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com Requirements elicitation For requirements elicitation, at least two strategies can be distinguished to minimize ambiguity: - First, a context must be established, because language is interpreted always in context, and if this context is not made explicit and agreed to by all the stakeholders in an elicitation session, misinterpretations are likely. - Second, the requirement engineer’s paraphrasing what she understood from the customers’ and users’ statements in her own words is an effective way for the requirements engineer to get the customers and users to spot their own ambiguities.
18. 18 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com Requirements documentation For requirements documentation, at least three strategies can be distinguished to avoid ambiguity: - Increasing the precision of natural language Glossaries, style guides, sentence patterns, and controlled languages; - Providing more context information Comments, rationales, fit criteria, test cases, inverse requirements, and traceability information - Setting up conventions for interpretation
19. 19 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com Requirements validation For requirements validation, at least four strategies can be distinguished to detect ambiguity: - Formalization of informal requirements - Searching for particular patterns of ambiguity - Comparing the interpretations of a document by different stakeholders - Сommunicating an interpretation back to the requirements author, after which she can easily point out misinterpretations.
20. 20 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com 5 - Avoiding Ambiguities in Natural Language Specifications and Contracts This section covers a variety of common linguistic, lexical, structural, scope, referential, and language-error ambiguities that appear in both requirements specifications and legal contracts. In each case, we 1. give a succinct example of a general problem, 2. give common solutions to the general problem, applied to the succinct example, 3. describe drawbacks of the common solutions, 4. offer a correct solution to the general problem, again applied to the succinct example.
21. 21 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com Ambiguous, Vague, and Uncertain Words and, any, or after, before, next, previous, etc. minimum and maximum a large number of adjectives and adverbs: acceptable, accurate, appropriate, easy, efficient, essential, immediately, minimum, maximum, periodically, sufficient, user-friendly, etc. also verbs and nouns can be vague: support, handle, process, reject, use, etc. and user. uncertainty is expressed using words such as not limited to, etc., can, may, probably, possibly, usually, etc.
22. 22 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com Quantification all, each, every a, all, any, each one, some, and the as quantifiers many and few only, also, others even
23. 23 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com Structural ambiguity - Adjectives and other modifiers: English grammar teacher English, i.e., British, teacher of grammar, not necessarily English grammar teacher of English grammar, with the teacher’s nationality left unspecified - Pronoun references: Bob said to Joe that he must leave - This and Whole Ideas: this that refers to a whole idea vs. this referring to a specific noun - Otherwise - Not - Not and because - And and or in the same sentence
24. 24 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com Parallelism - Assumed parallelism: Shoes must be worn. Dogs must be carried. - Than and Different From and Parallelism: Cleveland is closer to Philadelphia than New York. The method used for coding is different from structuring.
25. 25 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com Other things - Quoted Word vs. Denotation - Time Expressions - Ambiguity Even in Formalism!!!
26. 26 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com 6 - Examples Technical specifications: Legal documents:
27. 27 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com 7 - Writing guides - General writing - Technical writing - Requirements specification writing - Legal document writing - Guidelines on avoiding and finding ambiguities
28. 28 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com 8 - Conclusion Even with all the systematic techniques and modeling, avoiding and detecting ambiguities is at best an art. Fundamentally and ultimately, an ambiguity is anything that causes different people to understand differently; unfortunately, the set of people that happen to examine a document may just not have a person that detects an understanding that demonstrates an ambiguity. Therefore, it will be necessary to improve our skills at avoiding and detecting ambiguities. We need to teach lawyers and requirements engineers to write unambiguously. We need to teach lawyers and requirements engineers to spot hidden ambiguities.
29. 29 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com Takeaways Applicability - Types of ambiguity (what to expect from the text written in natural language) - Techniques to deal with ambiguity (metatextual components of documentation) - Techniques to avoid ambiguity (inventorization of typically “weak” places) Assessment of the task ahead - Multiple linguistic levels - “Artistic” nature of the skill needed for the task
30. 30 Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com Thank you!