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The Controlled Natural Language of Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer [pdf]

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Re: The Controlled Natural Language of Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer [pdf]

#21

Post by gotodengo »

JorgeGT wrote: post #16
Pitarou wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also a common complaint about Simple English books written for English learners. The books claim to have a restricted vocabulary, but they cheat by using phrasal verbs. Their vocabulary includes verbs like put and set along with prepositions like up , with and upon . You can combine these to generate an enormous number of phrasal verbs like put up with , set upon and so on, which are normally considered to be…

As a person whose first language is not English, I find phrasal verbs one of the most challenging parts of the language. In fact I just searched set upon and was greatly surprised that it means attacking violently! I would have never guessed that from the words alone.

In this case the phrase is a more artistic way of describing the beginning of a fight. Think of "John set upon Mike angrily" as John set, or selected, Mike as his target.

It's also a great example of the topic at hand because the same phrase could be used like "The book was set upon the table." Describing a book that was placed on a table.

Each version uses the same common vocabulary, to describe wildly different things.

Re: The Controlled Natural Language of Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer [pdf]

#22

Post by TuringTest »

GolDDranks wrote: post #4
GolDDranks wrote: post #3

I thought Thing Explainer is a fun experiment and a delightful book, but as an attempt (and it isn't a serious attempt) to use only simple and super-commonly-used language, it doesn't hit the home base. As I speak English as my second language I'm acutely aware of this. Thing explainer uses the 1000 most commonly used lemmas, but words have multiple senses, and some of them are commonly used and some are not. From a…

P.S. Machine translation is often considered as one of the most typical examples of NLP problems, but it would be also interesting to see "machine simplification" to get more attention. Can we automate the translation from English to Simple English? Currently not very well.

I think it is more likely that computers will first manage to understand texts written in Simple English way before they are able to do the same with English.

That is not surprising, as that's exactly how humans learn to work with language.

Re: The Controlled Natural Language of Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer [pdf]

#23

Post by drb311 »

GolDDranks wrote: post #3

I thought Thing Explainer is a fun experiment and a delightful book, but as an attempt (and it isn't a serious attempt) to use only simple and super-commonly-used language, it doesn't hit the home base. As I speak English as my second language I'm acutely aware of this. Thing explainer uses the 1000 most commonly used lemmas, but words have multiple senses, and some of them are commonly used and some are not. From a…

The text editor is here:

http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/

Try it!

1,000 words is an unrealistic constraint. But I'm amazed how often I use a complex word when the simple alternative is better.

Or...

Sticking to 1,000 words is hard. But doing it often makes my writing better.

Re: The Controlled Natural Language of Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer [pdf]

#26

Post by vanderZwan »

stepanhruda wrote: post #25

I have Thing Explainer right here, my main issue is I'd like a separate version with the actual terms so I can have a conversation about the covered topics without sounding like a moron.

What I think would be interesting is if he tried another version without the 1000 most common words.

Re: The Controlled Natural Language of Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer [pdf]

#27

Post by eddieroger »

drb311 wrote: post #23
GolDDranks wrote: post #3

I thought Thing Explainer is a fun experiment and a delightful book, but as an attempt (and it isn't a serious attempt) to use only simple and super-commonly-used language, it doesn't hit the home base. As I speak English as my second language I'm acutely aware of this. Thing explainer uses the 1000 most commonly used lemmas, but words have multiple senses, and some of them are commonly used and some are not. From a…

The text editor is here: http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/ Try it! 1,000 words is an unrealistic constraint. But I'm amazed how often I use a complex word when the simple alternative is better. Or... Sticking to 1,000 words is hard. But doing it often makes my writing better.

I wasn't familiar with that tool, so I put a few of my last HipChat messages in there to see how I faired. Once I removed specific words or proper nouns, I still didn't do all that well. Even the preceding sentence had four problem words, and I'm pretty sure "preceding" would join them.

I agree, sticking to 1,000 words is hard. But I don't think I agree that it makes the writing better. I look at language as a form of expression, and some words are just more colorful than others, but it takes all of them to paint a picture. I honestly don't know if I could limit myself to the 1,000 most common words, but I wouldn't want to do that if I could. That said, I'm curious why you think it makes your writing better? Is it that you think more about what you're saying? Or that you think it will be more easily digested by others?

Re: The Controlled Natural Language of Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer [pdf]

#28

Post by toothbrush »

gotodengo wrote: post #21
JorgeGT wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a person whose first language is not English, I find phrasal verbs one of the most challenging parts of the language. In fact I just searched set upon and was greatly surprised that it means attacking violently! I would have never guessed that from the words alone.

In this case the phrase is a more artistic way of describing the beginning of a fight. Think of "John set upon Mike angrily" as John set, or selected, Mike as his target. It's also a great example of the topic at hand because the same phrase could be used like "The book was set upon the table." Describing a book that was placed on a table. Each version uses the same common vocabulary, to describe wildly different thi…

Or, John was set upon going to the movies tonight, but his friend refused to join him.

Admittedly, that sounds a bit old-fashioned.

Re: The Controlled Natural Language of Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer [pdf]

#29

Post by eterm »

jgrahamc wrote: post #9
adrianratnapala wrote: post #5

Thing explainer is fun -- but I don't think the descriptions in it are particularly clear. It's just fun to see how he solves the problem of describing them given his self-imposed limitation. Even more fun is Poul Andersons "uncleftish beholding": http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/complexity/people/st...

Agreed. Often you have to already know what he's talking about to get meaning from his words. For example, his description of the Saturn V Rocket (he replaced rocket with 'up goer') has this description of hydrogen: "The kind of air that once burned a big sky bag and people died (And someone said "Oh the [humans]!") I guess that's amusing if you already know about the Hindenburg, or something. Also, speaking of the p…

To be fair, Up-goer Five is the original for the comic, it was hardly intended at the time that it would take off the way it did. That it generated so much interest led to the book.

Re: The Controlled Natural Language of Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer [pdf]

#30

Post by johnlbevan2 »

gotodengo wrote: post #21
JorgeGT wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a person whose first language is not English, I find phrasal verbs one of the most challenging parts of the language. In fact I just searched set upon and was greatly surprised that it means attacking violently! I would have never guessed that from the words alone.

In this case the phrase is a more artistic way of describing the beginning of a fight. Think of "John set upon Mike angrily" as John set, or selected, Mike as his target. It's also a great example of the topic at hand because the same phrase could be used like "The book was set upon the table." Describing a book that was placed on a table. Each version uses the same common vocabulary, to describe wildly different thi…

Whilst this ambiguity is a pain for those learning the language and for clarity, it's also one of the things which makes English a great language for puns/wordplay.

I suspect that having a reduced vocabulary would likely increase the chances of ambiguity, so could be a great source of CNL puns.

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