Score-Based Automatic Detection and Resolution of Syntactic Ambiguity in Natural Language Requirements

Osama, Mohamed; Zaki-Ismail, Aya; Abdelrazek, Mohamed; Grundy, John; Ibrahim, Amani S.

doi:10.1109/icsme46990.2020.00067

Cited by 20 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…--Syntactic Ambiguity: This level focuses on detecting sentences that have different possible grammatical structures. We recognized one paper handling this level of ambiguity (Osama et al [108]). --Semantic Ambiguity: This level focuses on detecting confusing contexts in sentences such as anaphoric ambiguity and coordination ambiguity.…”

Section: ) Requirements Extractionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Use of NLP-Based Text Representation Techniques to Support Requirement Engineering Tasks: A Systematic Mapping Review

2022

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Natural Language Processing (NLP) is widely used to support the automation of different Requirements Engineering (RE) tasks. Most of the proposed approaches start with various NLP steps that analyze requirements statements, extract their linguistic information, and convert them to easy-toprocess representations, such as lists of features or embedding-based vector representations. These NLPbased representations are usually used at a later stage as inputs for machine learning techniques or rulebased methods. Thus, requirements representations play a major role in determining the accuracy of different approaches. In this paper, we conducted a survey in the form of a systematic literature mapping (classification) to find out (1) what are the representations used in RE tasks literature, (2) what is the main focus of these works, (3) what are the main research directions in this domain, and ( 4) what are the gaps and potential future directions. After compiling an initial pool of 2,227 papers, and applying a set of inclusion/exclusion criteria, we obtained a final pool containing 104 relevant papers. Our survey shows that the research direction has changed from the use of lexical and syntactic features to the use of advanced embedding techniques, especially in the last two years. Using advanced embedding representations has proved its effectiveness in most RE tasks (such as requirement analysis, extracting requirements from reviews and forums, and semantic-level quality tasks). However, representations that are based on lexical and syntactic features are still more appropriate for other RE tasks (such as modeling and syntax-level quality tasks) since they provide the required information for the rules and regular expressions used when handling these tasks. In addition, we identify four gaps in the existing literature, why they matter, and how future research can begin to address them.

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Section: ) Requirements Extractionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Use of NLP-Based Text Representation Techniques to Support Requirement Engineering Tasks: A Systematic Mapping Review

2022

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“…-Syntactic Ambiguity: This level focuses on detecting sentences that have different possible grammatical structures. We recognized one paper handling this level of ambiguity (Osama et al [108]).…”

Section: Quality Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Use of NLP-Based Text Representation Techniques to Support Requirement Engineering Tasks: A Systematic Mapping Review

Sonbol,

Rebdawi,

Ghneim

2022

Preprint

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Natural Language Processing (NLP) is widely used to support the automation of different Requirements Engineering (RE) tasks. Most of the proposed approaches start with various NLP steps that analyze requirements statements, extract their linguistic information, and convert them to easy-toprocess representations, such as lists of features or embedding-based vector representations. These NLP-based representations are usually used at a later stage as inputs for machine learning techniques or rule-based methods. Thus, requirements representations play a major role in determining the accuracy of different approaches. In this paper, we conducted a survey in the form of a systematic literature mapping (classification) to find out ( 1) what are the representations used in RE tasks literature, ( 2) what is the main focus of these works, (3) what are the main research directions in this domain, and ( 4) what are the gaps and potential future directions. After compiling an initial pool of 2,227 papers, and applying a set of inclusion/exclusion criteria, we obtained a final pool containing 104 relevant papers. Our survey shows that the research direction has changed from the use of lexical and syntactic features to the use of advanced embedding techniques, especially in the last two years. Using advanced embedding representations has proved its effectiveness in most RE tasks (such as requirement analysis, extracting requirements from reviews and forums, and semantic-level quality tasks). However, representations that are based on lexical and syntactic features are still more appropriate for other RE tasks (such as modeling and syntax-level quality tasks) since they provide the required information for the rules and regular expressions used when handling these tasks. In addition, we identify four gaps in the existing literature, why they matter, and how future research can begin to address them.

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“…Ambiguity is a persistent issue in NL requirements. Hence, such ambiguity has been extensively studied in the literature [17,18,19,11,20]. For example, recently, Ezzini et al [20] proposed six alternative solutions for automating the handling of anaphoric ambiguity in requirements.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, analysts sometimes describe multiple functions in a single requirement (i.e., non-atomic requirement), miss essential words (e.g., actors and verbs) or even phrases (e.g., system responses), or write a requirement following an ambiguous structure (e.g., a system response between conditions). We note that some of these quality problems have been studied individually in many prior works, such as checking the completeness [12,13,14,15,16] or ambiguity [17,18,19,11,20] of requirements. However, compared to these research strands, there has been relatively less focus on developing an automated solution that can both detect and resolve multiple quality problems in a requirement.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On systematically building a controlled natural language for functional requirements

et al. 2021

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Natural language (NL) is pervasive in software requirements specifications (SRSs). However, despite its popularity and widespread use, NL is highly prone to quality issues such as vagueness, ambiguity, and incompleteness. Controlled natural languages (CNLs) have been proposed as a way to prevent quality problems in requirements documents, while maintaining the flexibility to write and communicate requirements in an intuitive and universally understood manner. In collaboration with an industrial partner from the financial domain, we systematically develop and evaluate a CNL, named Rimay, intended at helping analysts write functional requirements. We rely on Grounded Theory for building Rimay and follow well-known guidelines for conducting and reporting industrial case study research. Our main contributions are: (1) a qualitative methodology to systematically define a CNL for functional requirements; this methodology is intended to be general for use across information-system domains, (2) a CNL grammar to represent functional requirements; this grammar is derived from our experience in the financial domain, but should be applicable, possibly with adaptations, to other information-system domains, and (3) an empirical evaluation of our CNL (Rimay) through an industrial case study. Our contributions draw on 15 representative SRSs, collectively containing 3215 NL requirements statements from the financial domain. Our evaluation shows that Rimay is expressive enough to capture, on average, 88% (405 out of 460) of the NL requirements statements in four previously unseen SRSs from the financial domain.

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Score-Based Automatic Detection and Resolution of Syntactic Ambiguity in Natural Language Requirements

Cited by 20 publications

References 20 publications

The Use of NLP-Based Text Representation Techniques to Support Requirement Engineering Tasks: A Systematic Mapping Review

The Use of NLP-Based Text Representation Techniques to Support Requirement Engineering Tasks: A Systematic Mapping Review

The Use of NLP-Based Text Representation Techniques to Support Requirement Engineering Tasks: A Systematic Mapping Review

On systematically building a controlled natural language for functional requirements

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