Editing Universal Networking Language (section)

== Structure ==
In UNL, the information conveyed by the natural language is represented sentence by sentence as a [[hypergraph]] 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: 

[[File:UNLGraph.svg]]

In the example above, <code>sky(icl>natural world)</code> and <code>blue(icl>color)</code>, 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 [[Ontology|ontological]] (such as "icl" and "iof"), [[Logic|logical]] (such as "and" and "or"), or [[Thematic analysis|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 (programming languages)|syntax]].

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.