{{Advert, date=April 2021 Universal Networking Language (UNL) is a declarative

formal language In logic, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics, a formal language is a set of strings whose symbols are taken from a set called "alphabet". The alphabet of a formal language consists of symbols that concatenate into strings (also c ...

specifically designed to represent

semantic Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...

data extracted from

natural language A natural language or ordinary language is a language that occurs naturally in a human community by a process of use, repetition, and change. It can take different forms, typically either a spoken language or a sign language. Natural languages ...

texts. It can be used as a pivot language in interlingual machine translation systems or as a

knowledge representation Knowledge representation (KR) aims to model information in a structured manner to formally represent it as knowledge in knowledge-based systems whereas knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR, KR&R, or KR²) also aims to understand, reason, and ...

language in

information retrieval Information retrieval (IR) in computing and information science is the task of identifying and retrieving information system resources that are relevant to an Information needs, information need. The information need can be specified in the form ...

applications.

Structure

In UNL, the information conveyed by the natural language is represented sentence by sentence as a

hypergraph In mathematics, a hypergraph is a generalization of a Graph (discrete mathematics), graph in which an graph theory, edge can join any number of vertex (graph theory), vertices. In contrast, in an ordinary graph, an edge connects exactly two vert ...

composed of a set of directed binary labeled links between nodes or hypernodes. As an example, the English sentence "The sky was blue?!" can be represented in UNL as follows: In the example above, sky(icl>natural world) and blue(icl>color), which represent individual concepts, are UW's attributes of an object directed to linking the semantic relation between the two UWs; "@def", "@interrogative", "@past", "@exclamation" and "@entry" are attributes modifying UWs. UWs are expressed in natural language to be humanly readable. They consist of a "headword" (the UW root) and a "constraint list" (the UW suffix between parentheses), where the constraints are used to disambiguate the general concept conveyed by the headword. The set of UWs is organized in the UNL Ontology. Relations are intended to represent semantic links between words in every existing language. They can be

ontological Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every ...

(such as "icl" and "iof"),

logical Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure of arg ...

(such as "and" and "or"), or thematic (such as "agt" = ''agent'', "ins" = ''instrument'', "tim" = ''time'', "plc" = ''place'', etc.). There are currently 46 relations in the UNL Specs that jointly define the UNL

syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...

. Within the UNL program, the process of representing natural language sentences in UNL graphs is called ''UNLization'', and the process of generating natural language sentences out of UNL graphs is called ''NLization''. UNLization is intended to be carried out semi-automatically (i.e., by humans with computer aids), and NLization is intended to be carried out automatically.

History

The UNL program started in 1996 as an initiative of the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) of the United Nations University (UNU) in Tokyo, Japan. In January 2001, the United Nations University set up an autonomous and non-profit organization, the UNDL Foundation, to be responsible for the development and management of the UNL program. It inherited from the UNU/IAS the mandate of implementing the UNL program. The overall architecture of the UNL System has been developed with a set of basic software and tools. It was recognized by the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) for the "industrial applicability" of the UNL, which was obtained in May 2002 through the

World Intellectual Property Organization The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO; (OMPI)) is one of the 15 specialized agencies of the United Nations (UN). Pursuant to the 1967 Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO was created to pr ...

(WIPO); the UNL acquired the US patents 6,704,700 and 7,107,206.

External links

UNLweb
the UNLweb portal
UNDL Foundation
where UNL development is coordinated.
Online book on UNL

UNL Society

UNL in Bangladesh

UNL in Brazil

UNL in Egypt

UNL in France

UNL in India

UNL in Italy

UNL in Japan

UNL in Jordan

UNL in RussiaRussian⇔UNL⇔English converter

Knowledge representation languages Computational linguistics Machine translation Translation

Structure

History

See also

External links

UNL Society