Codeco: A Practical Notation for Controlled English Grammars in Predictive Editors

This paper introduces a new grammar notation, called Codeco, designed for controlled natural language (CNL) and predictive editors. Existing grammar frameworks that target either formal or natural languages do not work out particularly well for CNL, especially if they are to be used in predictive editors and if anaphoric references should be resolved in a deterministic way. It is not trivial to build predictive editors that can precisely determine which anaphoric references are possible at a certain position. This paper shows how such complex structures can be represented in Codeco, a novel grammar notation for CNL. Two different parsers have been implemented (one in Prolog and another one in Java) and a large subset of Attempto Controlled English (ACE) has been represented in Codeco. The results show that Codeco is practical, adequate and efficient.