PleaSQLarify: Visual Pragmatic Repair for Natural Language Database Querying

Natural language database interfaces broaden data access, yet they remain brittle under input ambiguity. Standard approaches often collapse uncertainty into a single query, offering little support for mismatches between user intent and system interpretation. We reframe this challenge through pragmatic inference: while users economize expressions, systems operate on priors over the action space that may not align with the users’. In this view, pragmatic repair—incremental clarification through minimal interaction—is a natural strategy for resolving underspecification. We present PleaSQLarify, which operationalizes pragmatic repair by structuring interaction around interpretable decision variables that enable efficient clarification1. A visual interface2 complements this by surfacing the action space for exploration, requesting user disambiguation, and making belief updates traceable across turns. In a study with twelve participants, PleaSQLarify helped users recognize alternative interpretations and efficiently resolve ambiguity. Our findings highlight pragmatic repair as a design principle that fosters effective user control in natural language interfaces.