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 $\text{textsc}PleaSQLarify$, which operationalizes pragmatic repair by structuring interaction around interpretable decision variables that enable efficient clarification. A visual interface 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, $\text{textsc}PleaSQLarify$ 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.