Requirements for tools for ambiguity identification and measurement in natural language requirements specifications

A Step Towards Ambiguity Less Natural Language Software Requirements Specifications

In modern software engineering practice, the ability to specify ambiguity less software requirements in a natural language (NL) in a seamless way is highly valuable and desirable. Though, the software requirements are typically captured in natural languages (NL) such as English, there is a very high probability that more than half NL requirements can be ambiguous. For example, Mich identified t...

Attempto: Controlled Natural Language for Requirements Specifications

Writing specifications for computer programs is not easy since one has to take into account the disparate conceptual worlds of the application domain and of software development. To bridge this conceptual gap we propose controlled natural language as a declarative and application-specific specification language. Controlled natural language is a subset of natural language that can be accurately ...

Ambiguity in Natural Language Requirements Documents

Taming Ambiguity in Natural Language Requirements

One of the main tasks of requirements engineering (RE) is the creation of a requirements document that precisely, consistently, and completely describes the functional and non-functional properties of the system to be built. At some point during the RE process, the requirements are written down using a natural language or a requirements specification language. On one hand, natural language is f...

Identifying nocuous ambiguity in natural language requirements

This dissertation is an investigation into how ambiguity should be classified for authors and readers of text, and how this process can be automated. Usually, authors and readers disambiguate ambiguity, either consciously or unconsciously. However, disambiguation is not always appropriate. For instance, a linguistic construction may be read differently by different people, with no consensus abo...