<div dir="ltr">Hello,<div><br></div><div>I have been experimenting with using attempto controlled english as an interface for a music generation tool (for which specifications are written in Datalog).  The APE interface for attempto statements to Prolog has been incredibly helpful, and it's been surprisingly easy to write simple statements in ACE and then have them included in the datalog specification.</div><div><br></div><div>However - one thing I'm not really sure how to do with ACE that's crucial for musical specifications is temporal coordination.  For instance, the following sentences parse in APE:</div><div><br></div><div><span style="font-variant-ligatures:no-common-ligatures;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Menlo;font-size:11px">"The theme for the flute should be lyrical."</span><br></div><div>





<p class="gmail-p1" style="margin:0px;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Menlo;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span class="gmail-s1" style="font-variant-ligatures:no-common-ligatures">"The motion in the clarinet and the motion in the violin should be parallel."</span></p><p class="gmail-p1" style="margin:0px;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Menlo;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span class="gmail-s1" style="font-variant-ligatures:no-common-ligatures"><br></span></p><p class="gmail-p1" style="margin:0px;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-variant-ligatures:no-common-ligatures">However, I'm interested in particular for this domain in temporal subordination - for instance:</span></font></p><p class="gmail-p1" style="margin:0px;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-variant-ligatures:no-common-ligatures"><br></span></font></p><p class="gmail-p1" style="margin:0px;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)">





</p><p class="gmail-p1" style="margin:0px;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Menlo;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span class="gmail-s1" style="font-variant-ligatures:no-common-ligatures">"[Until/While/Whenever] the movement in the clarinet and the movement in the violin is parallel, the theme for the flute should be lyrical."</span></p><p class="gmail-p1" style="margin:0px;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Menlo;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span class="gmail-s1" style="font-variant-ligatures:no-common-ligatures"><br></span></p><p class="gmail-p1" style="margin:0px;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span class="gmail-s1" style="font-variant-ligatures:no-common-ligatures"><font face="arial, sans-serif">This seems like a pretty basic requirement for my use case.  How would you approach it using ACE?</font></span></p><p class="gmail-p1" style="margin:0px;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span class="gmail-s1" style="font-variant-ligatures:no-common-ligatures"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></span></p><p class="gmail-p1" style="margin:0px;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span class="gmail-s1" style="font-variant-ligatures:no-common-ligatures"><font face="arial, sans-serif">My first thought was that whenever I parse a sentence using a constituency parser and it divides into a "While X, Y" statement, I would rewrite it before sending it to the parser as "There is some time that X.  If X then Y."  Is there a better way to think about this?  And if rewriting like this is the right way to go about it, are there existing tools for performing such rewriting in an elegant way?</font></span></p><p class="gmail-p1" style="margin:0px;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br></p><p class="gmail-p1" style="margin:0px;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span class="gmail-s1" style="font-variant-ligatures:no-common-ligatures"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></span></p><p class="gmail-p1" style="margin:0px;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span class="gmail-s1" style="font-variant-ligatures:no-common-ligatures"><font face="arial, sans-serif">Many thanks,</font></span></p></div><div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr">Halley Young<div><a href="http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~halleyy/" target="_blank">http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~halleyy/</a><br></div></div></div></div></div>