Este trabalho descreve EXTIO (Extraction of Temporal Information Using Ontologies), uma abordagem que permite a normalização de expressões temporais e a organização em ontologia de fatos temporais extraídos de texto em linguagem natural. Isto permite que motores de busca possam aproveitar melhor a informação temporal de páginas daWeb, realizando inferências sobre fatos temporais. EXTIO propõe: a normalização de expressões temporais relativas através de uma gramática formal para a língua inglesa; e a organização de fatos temporais extraídos do texto normalizado em uma ontologia. Expressões temporais relativas são construções textuais de tempo que se referem a uma data absoluta cujo valor é relativo a outra data. Por exemplo, a expressão “three months ago” (três meses atrás) é uma expressão temporal relativa, pois seu surgimento no texto se refere a uma data três meses antes da data de publicação do documento. Experimentos demonstram que a gramática formal proposta para a normalização de expressões temporais relativas supera o baseline na eficácia da normalização e no tempo de processamento de documentos em linguagem natural. A principal contribuição deste trabalho é a gramática formal para normalização de expressões temporais relativas de texto na língua inglesa. Também é contribuição deste trabalho o processamento semântico da informação temporal disponível em formato texto em documentos, para que possa ser melhor aproveitada por motores de busca. / This work describes EXTIO, an approach for the normalization of temporal expressions and the semantic organization of temporal facts extracted from natural language text. This approach allows search engines to benefit from temporal information in Web pages, performing inferences on temporal facts. EXTIO proposes: the normalization of relative temporal expressions through a formal grammar for the English language; and the organization of temporal facts extracted from normalized text in an ontology. Relative temporal expressions are textual time structures that refer to an absolute date whose value is relative to another date. For instance, “three months ago” is a relative temporal expression because its appearance in the text refers to a date three months before the document publication date. Experiments show that the proposed formal grammar for the normalization of relative temporal expressions has a better performance than the baseline in effectiveness and processing time. The main contribution of this work is the formal grammar for the normalization of temporal expressions in natural language text in English. Another contribution of this work is the semantic processing of temporal information available in documents, so that search engines may benefit from this information.

Este trabalho descreve EXTIO (Extraction of Temporal Information Using Ontologies), uma abordagem que permite a normalização de expressões temporais e a organização em ontologia de fatos temporais extraídos de texto em linguagem natural. Isto permite que motores de busca possam aproveitar melhor a informação temporal de páginas daWeb, realizando inferências sobre fatos temporais. EXTIO propõe: a normalização de expressões temporais relativas através de uma gramática formal para a língua inglesa; e a organização de fatos temporais extraídos do texto normalizado em uma ontologia. Expressões temporais relativas são construções textuais de tempo que se referem a uma data absoluta cujo valor é relativo a outra data. Por exemplo, a expressão “three months ago” (três meses atrás) é uma expressão temporal relativa, pois seu surgimento no texto se refere a uma data três meses antes da data de publicação do documento. Experimentos demonstram que a gramática formal proposta para a normalização de expressões temporais relativas supera o baseline na eficácia da normalização e no tempo de processamento de documentos em linguagem natural. A principal contribuição deste trabalho é a gramática formal para normalização de expressões temporais relativas de texto na língua inglesa. Também é contribuição deste trabalho o processamento semântico da informação temporal disponível em formato texto em documentos, para que possa ser melhor aproveitada por motores de busca. / This work describes EXTIO, an approach for the normalization of temporal expressions and the semantic organization of temporal facts extracted from natural language text. This approach allows search engines to benefit from temporal information in Web pages, performing inferences on temporal facts. EXTIO proposes: the normalization of relative temporal expressions through a formal grammar for the English language; and the organization of temporal facts extracted from normalized text in an ontology. Relative temporal expressions are textual time structures that refer to an absolute date whose value is relative to another date. For instance, “three months ago” is a relative temporal expression because its appearance in the text refers to a date three months before the document publication date. Experiments show that the proposed formal grammar for the normalization of relative temporal expressions has a better performance than the baseline in effectiveness and processing time. The main contribution of this work is the formal grammar for the normalization of temporal expressions in natural language text in English. Another contribution of this work is the semantic processing of temporal information available in documents, so that search engines may benefit from this information.

Este trabalho descreve EXTIO (Extraction of Temporal Information Using Ontologies), uma abordagem que permite a normalização de expressões temporais e a organização em ontologia de fatos temporais extraídos de texto em linguagem natural. Isto permite que motores de busca possam aproveitar melhor a informação temporal de páginas daWeb, realizando inferências sobre fatos temporais. EXTIO propõe: a normalização de expressões temporais relativas através de uma gramática formal para a língua inglesa; e a organização de fatos temporais extraídos do texto normalizado em uma ontologia. Expressões temporais relativas são construções textuais de tempo que se referem a uma data absoluta cujo valor é relativo a outra data. Por exemplo, a expressão “three months ago” (três meses atrás) é uma expressão temporal relativa, pois seu surgimento no texto se refere a uma data três meses antes da data de publicação do documento. Experimentos demonstram que a gramática formal proposta para a normalização de expressões temporais relativas supera o baseline na eficácia da normalização e no tempo de processamento de documentos em linguagem natural. A principal contribuição deste trabalho é a gramática formal para normalização de expressões temporais relativas de texto na língua inglesa. Também é contribuição deste trabalho o processamento semântico da informação temporal disponível em formato texto em documentos, para que possa ser melhor aproveitada por motores de busca. / This work describes EXTIO, an approach for the normalization of temporal expressions and the semantic organization of temporal facts extracted from natural language text. This approach allows search engines to benefit from temporal information in Web pages, performing inferences on temporal facts. EXTIO proposes: the normalization of relative temporal expressions through a formal grammar for the English language; and the organization of temporal facts extracted from normalized text in an ontology. Relative temporal expressions are textual time structures that refer to an absolute date whose value is relative to another date. For instance, “three months ago” is a relative temporal expression because its appearance in the text refers to a date three months before the document publication date. Experiments show that the proposed formal grammar for the normalization of relative temporal expressions has a better performance than the baseline in effectiveness and processing time. The main contribution of this work is the formal grammar for the normalization of temporal expressions in natural language text in English. Another contribution of this work is the semantic processing of temporal information available in documents, so that search engines may benefit from this information.

The purpose of this dissertation is to develop a new generative grammar, based on the principles of intensional logic. More specifically, the goal is to create a psychologically real grammar model for use in natural language processing. The new grammar consists of a set of context-free rewrite rules tagged with intensional versions. Most generative grammars, such as transformational grammar, lexical functional-grammar and head-driven phrase structure grammar, extend traditional context-free grammars with a mechanism for dealing with contextual information, such as subcategorization of words and agreement between different phrasal elements. In these grammars there is not enough separation between the utterances of a language and the context in which they are uttered. Their models of language seem to assume that context is in some way encapsulated in the words of the language instead of the other way around. In intensional logic, the truth of a statement is considered in the context in which it is uttered, unlike traditional predicate logic in which truth is assigned in a vacuum, regardless of when or where it may have been stated. To date, the application of the principles of intensionality to natural languages has been confined to semantic theory. We remedy this by applying the ideas of intensional logic to syntactic context, resulting in intensional context-free grammar. Our grammar takes full advantage of the simplicity and elegance of context-free grammars while accounting for information that is beyond the sentence itself, in a realistic way. Sentence derivation is entirely encapsulated in the context of its utterance. In fact, for any particular context, the entire language of the grammar is encapsulated in that context. This is evidenced by our proof that the language of an intensional grammar is a set of context-free languages, indexed by context. To further support our claims we design and implement a small fragment of English using the grammar. The English grammar is capable of generating both passive and active sentences that include a subject, verb and up to two optional objects. Furthermore, we have implemented a partial French to English translation system that uses a single language dimension to initiate a translation. This allows us to include multiple languages in one grammar, unlike other systems which must separate the grammars of each language. This result has led this author to believe that we have created a grammar that is a viable candidate for a true Universal Grammar, far exceeding our initial goals. / Graduate / 0984 / 0800 / 0290 / rlittle@uvic.ca

La représentation de phénomènes naturels fait partie des domaines les plus complexes et les plus actifs de la recherche en informatique graphique. Notre compréhension de la nature s'améliorant au fil des années, les chercheurs ne cessent de proposer des nouveaux modèles, toujours plus pertinents les uns que les autres, et permettant de reproduire les différents phénomènes naturels que nous pouvons observer autour de nous, dans la vie de tous les jours. Nous nous sommes intéressés à la représentation du fruit et des différents éléments qui le caractérisent. Le fruit est un objet complexe et, en fonction de la précision requise, sa conception à l'aide de logiciels de modélisation 3D peut très vite devenir compliquée. Notre modèle permet de générer une grande variété de fruits de formes différentes ainsi que les différents éléments de leur structure interne et ce, grâce à l'utilisation d'une seule grammaire. Au sein d'une même espèce, les fruits générés seront tous différents au niveau de leur forme, tout en restant semblables. La seconde partie de nos travaux porte quant à elle sur la représentation des imperfections géométriques qui sont propres aux fruits. Les fruits sont le résultat de l'enchaînement d'un très grand nombre de processus physiologiques complexes qui interagissent fortement entre eux. Lorsque le bon fonctionnement de l'un de ces processus est compromis, cette anomalie se matérialise sur le fruit par l'apparition de défauts au niveau de sa forme. Notre modèle propose une approche simple, basée sur l'utilisation de grammaires, qui permettent d'altérer soit la forme générale d'un fruit soit des parties de sa surface. / One of the largest areas of research in computer graphics deals with natural phenomena representation. Over the years, as our understanding of nature grew, researchers started to propose new ways of simulating the various natural phenomena that we can observe in our everyday life. In this thesis, we focused on the representation of fruits. The fruit is a complex object. Depending on the desired accuracy, modeling a 3D fruit using classic 3D modeling software can become very tedious. We propose a model for generating vast varieties of fruits as well as their internal structure, thanks to the use of a single formal grammar. Each fruit that will be generated using our method will have global features that characterize its species, but it will also have local variations that are specific to it. The second part of ou work involves the representation of geometrical imperfections along the fruit. The fruit is the result of a series of physiological processes that strongly interact with each other. When one of these processes does not work the way it should, this dysfunction is materialized in the form of a shape defect. Our model introduces a simple approach, based on the use of grammars, which will allow us to apply variations on fruits in order to generate various categories of shape defects.

Voice interaction is an established automatization and accessibility feature. While many satisfactory speech recognition solutions are available today, the interpretation of text se-mantic is in some use-cases difficult. Differentiated can be two types of text semantic ex-traction models: probabilistic and pure rule-based. Rule-based reasoning is formalizable into grammars and enables fast language validation, transparent decision-making and easy customization. In this thesis we develop a context-free ANTLR semantic grammar to control software by speech in a medical, smart glasses related, domain. The implementation is preceded by research of state-of-the-art, requirements consultation and a thorough design of reusable system abstractions. Design includes definitions of DSL, meta grammar, generic system ar-chitecture and tool support. Additionally, we investigate trivial and experimental grammar improvement techniques. Due to multifaceted flexibility and robustness of the designed framework, we indicate its usability in critical and adaptive systems. We determine 75% semantic recognition accuracy in the medical main use-case. We compare it against se-mantic extraction using SpaCy and two fine-tuned AI classifiers. The evaluation reveals high accuracy of BERT for sequence classification and big potential of hybrid solutions with AI techniques on top grammars, essentially for detection of alerts. The accuracy is strong dependent on input quality, highlighting the importance of speech recognition tailored to specific vocabulary.:1 Introduction 1 1.1 Motivation 1 1.2 CAIS.ME Project 2 1.3 Problem Statement 2 1.4 Thesis Overview 3 2 Related Work 4 3 Foundational Concepts and Systems 6 3.1 Human-Computer Interaction in Speech 6 3.2 Speech Recognition 7 3.2.1 Open-source technologies 8 3.2.2 Other technologies 9 3.3 Language Recognition 9 3.3.1 Regular expressions 10 3.3.2 Lexical tokenization 10 3.3.3 Parsing 10 3.3.4 Domain Specific Languages 11 3.3.5 Formal grammars 11 3.3.6 Natural Language Processing 12 3.3.7 Model-Driven Engineering 14 4 State-of-the-Art: Grammars 15 4.1 Overview 15 4.2 Workbenches for Grammar Design 16 4.2.1 ANTLR 16 4.2.2 Xtext 17 4.2.3 JetBrains MPS 17 4.2.4 Other tools 18 4.3 Design Approaches 19 5 Problem Analysis 23 5.1 Methodology 23 5.2 Identification of Use-Cases 24 5.3 Requirements Analysis 26 5.3.1 Functional requirements 26 5.3.2 Qualitative requirements 26 5.3.3 Acceptance criteria 27 6 Design 29 6.1 Preprocessing 29 6.2 Underlying Domain Specific Modelling 31 6.2.1 Language model definition 31 6.2.2 Formalization 32 6.2.3 Constraints 32 6.3 Generic Grammar Syntax 33 6.4 Architecture 36 6.5 Integration of AI Techniques 38 6.6 Grammar Improvement 40 6.6.1 Identification of synonyms 40 6.6.2 Automatic addition of synonyms 42 6.6.3 Addition of same-meaning strings 42 6.6.4 Addition and modification of rules 43 6.7 Processing of unrecognized input 44 6.8 Summary 45 7 Implementation and Evaluation 47 7.1 Development Environment 47 7.2 Implementation 48 7.2.1 Grammar model transformation 48 7.2.2 Output construction 50 7.2.3 Testing 50 7.2.4 Reusability for similar use-cases 51 7.3 Limitations and Challenges 52 7.4 Comparison to NLP Solutions 54 8 Conclusion 58 8.1 Summary of Findings 58 8.2 Future Research and Development 60 Acronyms 62 Bibliography 63 List of Figures 73 List of Tables 74 List of Listings 75