Universal Networking Language: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 03:38, 4 January 2013

Revision as of 02:56, 7 January 2013

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In the example above, "sky(icl>natural world)" and "blue(icl>color)", which represent individual concepts, are UWs; "aoj" (= attribute of an object) is a directed binary semantic relation linking the two UWs; and "@def", "@interrogative", "@past", "@exclamation" and "@entry" are attributes modifying UWs.

UWs are supposed to represent universal concepts which are expressed in English words or in any other natural language in order to be humanly readable. They consist of a "headword" (the UW root) and a "constraint list" (the UW suffix between parentheses), the latter being used to disambiguate the general concept conveyed by the former. The set of UWs isare organized in an[[UNL ontology-like structure (the so-called "UW System")Ontology]], where upper concepts are used to disambiguate the lower ones through "icl" (= is a kind of), "iof" (= is an instance of) and "equ" (= is equal to) relations.

Relations are expected to represent semantic links between words in every existing language. They can be ontological (such as "icl" and "iof" referred to above), logical (such as "and" and "or") and thematic (such as "agt" = agent, "ins" = instrument, "tim" = time, "plc" = place, etc.). There are currently 46 relations in the UNL Specs, and they define the syntax of UNL.