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arXiv:1605.02457cs.CL

The Controlled Natural Language of Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer

Tobias Kuhn

Abstract

It is rare that texts or entire books written in a Controlled Natural Language (CNL) become very popular, but exactly this has happened with a book that has been published last year. Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer uses only the 1'000 most often used words of the English language together with drawn pictures to explain complicated things such as nuclear reactors, jet engines, the solar system, and dishwashers. This restricted language is a very interesting new case for the CNL community. I describe here its place in the context of existing approaches on Controlled Natural Languages, and I provide a first analysis from a scientific perspective, covering the word production rules and word distributions.

arXiv comments
Journal reference
Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on Controlled Natural Language (CNL 2016), Springer 2016
DOI
Subjects
cs.CLComputation and Language

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Linked by 2 identifiable commenters in 2 comments across 2 threads, from May 2016 to Feb 2022. Found in 1 HN submission from May 2016 to May 2016. Open submission discussions.

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Discussed in comments2 threads

  1. Minimal English (2018) 1 comment

    • > My first thought when starting to read about this was xkcd's Thing Explainer. Mine too. Some links: https://xkcd.com/thing-explainer/ https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Thing-Explainer https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.02457.pdf

      CRConradView on HNParent context

  2. The Controlled Natural Language of Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer [pdf] 1 comment

    • While this is tagged as PDF the link is actually to the website where you can read the abstract. The PDF link is: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.02457v1.pdf

      jsingletonView on HNParent context

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