Daniel M. Berry

Cheriton School of Computer Science
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, ON, Canada

Abstract:

I argue that RE is where the formal meets the informal. I argue that it is inevitable that natural language be used for requirements. I discuss the tradeoff between natural language and formal languages in ambiguity and readability. I argue that the traditional approach of solving this problem by trying to get everybody to be formal is doomed, that we should focus instead on doing a better job in natural languages.

The talk also presents a survey of the Natural Language processing research that is relevant to Requirements Engineering.