Gellish English

Gellish English

Gellish Formal English (or 'Gellish English' for short) is the English variant of Gellish and is a formal language ('Formal English'), which means that it is a structured and formalized subset of natural English that is computer interpretable. Its definition includes a Formal English Dictionary-Taxonomy of concepts in which the concepts are arranged in a taxonomy hierarchy and is an ontology as far as required to define the language. From an information technology perspective Gellish Formal English is a standard nearly universal semantic data model that can be used for the modeling of individual things as well for knowledge representation. It is a data storage and data exchange language for the Semantic Web and can be used as a successor of electronic data interchange technologies. In principle, for every natural language there is a variant that is specific for that language. For example, Gellish Formal Dutch (Gellish Formeel Nederlands), Gellish Italian, etc.

Gellish is intended for the expression of facts (statements), queries, answers, etc. For example it can be used for the complete and unambiguous specifications of business processes, products, facilities and physical processes and their documentation. It is also suitable to express information about the specification, acquisition, fabrication, installation, operation and maintenance of objects and to exchange such information in a system independent and computer interpretable way or to integrate such data from different sources.

Each Gellish English expression has basically an extended 'anything-relation type-anything' structure (an extended triple structure). To enable a formal interpretation of such expressions it includes a large number of formally defined standard relation types, which determine its semantically rich expression capability. It is called and extended triple structure, because the basic triples are extended with 'auxiliary facts'. For example an expression can be extended with an indication of the 'intention' of the expression: is it a statement, a question, an answer, a denial, etc. This is derived from the Speech Act theory of John F. Searl. A formal expression can also be extended with an indication of a unit of measure for a numeric value. It can even be extended with a piece of natural language, for example for a textual definition or a textual specification of a requirement. Finally it is extended with auxiliary facts such as its status, timing, author and addressee. The structure of Gellish Formal English expressions with its auxiliary facts defines the Gellish Formal language expression syntax as well as the 'Gellish Data Table'. These definitions are provided in the document 'Definition of Universal Semantic Databases and Data Exchange Messages'. The Gellish Formal English Dictionary-Taxonomy is itself expressed in Gellish English. Gellish English is an open language, which means that it is extendable by anybody who creates his own Domain Dictionary-Taxonomy according to the Gellish rules for extending the language. Various knowledge bases and 'object libraries' are written in Gellish English. The dictionary with definitions of the concepts in Gellish English can be used for various purposes. For example as standard terminology to harmonize data in various computer systems, for selection of classes for classification or as a basis for searching information with a search engine. The Gellish Dictionary also defines the standard relation types that are required to create computer interpretable Gellish Formal English expressions.

Gellish English is typically expressed in the form of standard Gellish Data Tables for Gellish Databases or standard Message Tables. A Gellish Data Table is a standard table that is suitable to represent any expression in a Gellish language. Its table columns are standardized. The tables can be used as a database or as an exchange file. Gellish Data Tables can be implemented in any tabular format. For example, it can be implemented as SQL database tables, as XML data stores, as collections of RDF triples, as STEPfiles (according to ISO 10303-21), or as one or more simple spreadsheet tables. Gellish English is defined in the Gellish English Dictionary-Taxonomy, earlier called STEPlib, together with the specification document 'Definition of Gellish Databases and Exchange Messages'. The Gellish Dictionary-Taxonomy itself is also expressed as a Gellish Data Table.

Gellish documentation is for (partly free) available under open source conditions via gellish.net.