9. An apparatus for extracting a system modeling meta-model language model for a system from a natural language specification of the system, comprising: a processor; and memory connected to the processor, wherein the memory is encoded with instructions and wherein the instructions when executed comprise: instructions for storing a natural language specification of a system; instructions for extracting syntactic structure from said natural language specification of a system, said syntactic structure representing a set of at least one syntactic subject; instructions for creating a first mapping between a predetermined said set of at least one syntactic subject and respective meta-model elements for a system modeling meta-model language, wherein said set of at least one syntactic subject comprises a noun phrase and said first mapping comprises a mapping of a respective noun phrase to said respective meta-model elements; instructions for extracting further syntactic structure representing a set of at least one syntactic predicate corresponding to each of said at least one syntactic subject; instructions for creating a second mapping between a predetermined set of said at least one syntactic predicate and respective meta-model associations for said meta-model elements; instructions for creating at least one respective meta-model relation for each corresponding meta-model elements in accordance with any corresponding syntactic predicate identified in said extracted further syntactic structure; instructions for creating at least one of said respective meta-model elements in accordance with said first mapping for each identified said set of at least one syntactic subject; instructions for extracting at least one semantic element from said natural language specification; when a semantic element associated with a given predicate indicates that said given predicate is passive, instructions for mapping a verb phrase from said given passive predicate as a meta-model reference between said meta-model elements for said corresponding subject and said meta-model elements for a corresponding object of said verb phrase, wherein a set of semantic elements comprises a set of optional semantic elements associated with said at least one of said subject or said object are mapped as at least one attribute of said corresponding meta-model elements; when said given predicate is active, instructions for mapping a verb phrase from said given active predicate to a meta-model operation for said meta-model elements corresponding to said subject; instructions for mapping said set of semantic elements, comprising a set of optional semantic elements associated with said at least one of said subject or said object, as at least one attribute of said corresponding meta-model elements, and thematic cluster data arranged to identify common semantic themes is determined from said set of optional semantic elements and transferred to said created at least one of said respective meta-model elements so as to enable the identification of said common semantic themes in said model of said system; and instructions for converting said created at least one of said respective meta-model elements into a model of said system.
10. An apparatus according to claim 9 , wherein when said predicate comprises said noun phrase, said respective noun phrase is mapped to a further meta-model element in accordance with said first mapping.