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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]

#31

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…

Or phonetically similar / by moving a space:

"John was set up on a date" - someone arranged a romantic encounter for John. "John was setup on a date" - on some specific day John was assembled. "John was set upon a date" - John assaulted a piece of fruit.

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

#32

Post by ghaff »

toothbrush wrote: post #28
gotodengo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Set on is probably a bit more natural in that context although I'm not sure either is particularly common phraseology.

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

#34

Post by aptwebapps »

johnlbevan2 wrote: post #31
gotodengo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 phonetically similar / by moving a space: "John was set up on a date" - someone arranged a romantic encounter for John. "John was setup on a date" - on some specific day John was assembled. "John was set upon a date" - John assaulted a piece of fruit.

The last one made me laugh but you need to remove the 'was'.

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

#35

Post by nkrisc »

johnlbevan2 wrote: post #31
gotodengo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 phonetically similar / by moving a space: "John was set up on a date" - someone arranged a romantic encounter for John. "John was setup on a date" - on some specific day John was assembled. "John was set upon a date" - John assaulted a piece of fruit.

Who is this romantic android enemy of fruit?

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

#36

Post by aptwebapps »

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.

Try writing only in red ...

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

#37

Post by andreasvc »

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.

Text simplification and summarization are active fields of research. Machine translation is indeed more active, but this is understandable given its commercial applications.

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

#38

Post by andreasvc »

vanderZwan wrote: post #26
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.

I don't think it's possible to form non-trivial sentences without function words. But leaving out common content words could be interesting.

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

#39

Post by Bjartr »

johnlbevan2 wrote: post #31
gotodengo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 phonetically similar / by moving a space: "John was set up on a date" - someone arranged a romantic encounter for John. "John was setup on a date" - on some specific day John was assembled. "John was set upon a date" - John assaulted a piece of fruit.

My read of the last one is that it means "John was set upon [getting] a date"

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

#40

Post by oddsignals »

nkrisc wrote: post #35
johnlbevan2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or phonetically similar / by moving a space: "John was set up on a date" - someone arranged a romantic encounter for John. "John was setup on a date" - on some specific day John was assembled. "John was set upon a date" - John assaulted a piece of fruit.

Who is this romantic android enemy of fruit?

John.
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