Providing a natural-language interface to a repository includes retrieving information from at least one repository, and generating a computer-readable ontology using the information. The computer-readable ontology is configured for use in interpreting user-entered natural-language statements regarding the at least one repository. A computer system including at least one repository has an ontology-generating module generating a computer-readable ontology using information retrieved from the at least one repository. The ontology may be created in any or all of several forms, such as a separate entity, a pointer structure or an index.