Word order based analysis of given and new information in controlled synthetic languages

When an OWL ontology, together with SWRL rules, is defined or verbalized in controlled natural language (CNL) it is important to ensure that the meaning of CNL statements will be unambiguously (predictably) interpreted by both human and machine. CNLs that are based on analytical languages (namely, English) impose a number of syntactic restrictions that enable the deterministic interpretation. Similar restrictions can be adapted to a large extent also for synthetic languages, however, a fundamental issue reveals in analysis of given (topic) and new (focus) information. In highly analytical CNLs, detection of which information is new and which has been already introduced is enabled by systematic use of definite and indefinite articles. In highly synthetic languages, articles are not typically used. In this paper we show that topic-focus articulation in synthetic CNLs can be reflected by systematic changes in word order that are both intuitive for a native speaker and formal for the automatic parsing. Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).