Preface : Acknowledgements

Launching a major endeavor such as the UNL requires the combined knowledge and talent of many people. Behind these people, there are a number of research institutions and traditional universities. In introducing this ambitious initiative to the public, and bringing the Specifications of the UNL system into the open, I would like to acknowledge the value of years of scientific research. I would like to thank the research teams for their highly motivated commitment. The following institutions joined the UNL initiative as partners in the first hour, in November 1996.

The Royal Scientific Society (Jordan)
Research Center of Computer & Microelectronics Industrial Development (CCID),
Ministry of Information Industry (MII) Peoples Republic of China
GETA-CLIPS, Universite Joseph Fourier & CNRS (France)
Institute for Applied Information Sciences (Germany)
Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (India)
Directorate for Technology in Informatics and Electronics, Agency for The
Assessment and Application of Technology (BPP Teknologi) (Indonesia)
Instituto di Linguistica Computazionale del CNR, Pisa (Italy)
Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Latvia (Latvia)
Mongolian State Pedagogical University of Mongolia (Mongolia)
University of Sao Paulo, at Sao Carlos (Brazil)
Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Information Transmission Problems (Russia)
STAR SPB Ltd, Saint Petersburg (Russia)
Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (Spain)
National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC) (Thailand).

A special Task Force on the UNL Specifications met several times before consolidating the first version of the Specifications that are presented in this edition. The Task Force included: Hiroshi Uchida (UNL Center, head of Task Force), Pushpak Bhattacharyya (UNL-India), Christian Boitet (UNL-France), Igor Boguslavsky (UNL-Moscow, Russia), Christian Boitet (UNL-France), Mike Dillinger (UNL-Brazil), David Escorial (UNL-Spain), Daoud Maher (UNL-Jordan), Luis Iraola Moreno (UNL-Spain), Irina Prodanof (UNL-Italy), Joerg Schuetz (UNL-Germany), Virach Sornlertlamvanich (UNL-Thailand), Oliver Streiter (UNL-Germany), M. Tomokiyo (UNL, France), Meiying Zhu (UNL Center).

I am particularly grateful to Dr. Kazuhiko Nishi for his vision of the treasure for humankind that UNL represents. Thanks are also due to Prof. Takenori Makino, the brain that produced the NEC supercomputer and a computational linguistics pioneer who was associated with the launching of this initiative. He also drafted parts of this publication.

My special gratitude goes to the many scientists and partners who believe that UNL is possible and engage their competence to realize it.

Tarcisio G. Della Senta
Director UNU/IAS