Certified software specifications and Mathematical Proofs in Natural Languages


Muhammad Humayoun, LAMA. 15 octobre 2007 10:00 limd 2:00:00
Abstract:

In this talk, I will present our work in which we are trying to make a connection between formal and natural languages. We aim to develop tools and resources capable of translating between natural languages and formal languages. I will present our attempts in translating mathematical proofs written in natural language into formal proofs. The implementation of our work is based on the Grammatical Framework (GF). GF is a grammar formalism based on type theory, which provides a special purpose language for defining grammars, and a compiler for this language. Further I will give an overview of the future work i.e. Checking formal software specifications with the specifications written in a natural language and to validate whether they correspond to each other or not. I will also argue that it is a very hard problem to generate a good quality text from a formalism. A natural motivation for this work is the fact that it is a normal practice in industry to write specifications in natural language. In a similar way, all the standards such as RFCs, ISO, ANSI, patents are written in plain natural language. Therefore this resource has an immediate usability in the industry. It will help to overcome the difficulties that prevent software designers & engineers to use formal methods. This Project has its usefulness in formal methods, Human computer interaction, natural language technology and Mathematical teaching.