Universal

Revision as of 17:31, 19 September 2012

The UNL is supposed to be a "universal" language, but it should be emphasized that "universal" here means "capable of being used and understood by all" (as in "Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)", or in "universal adapter"), rather than "common to all" (as in "Universal Grammar").

The idea of "universality" in UNL is closely related to the idea of "neutrality" or "internationality". The UNL intends to play a role similar to the linguae francae. It is expected to be a bridge (vehicular) language, i.e., a non-vernacular language used for communication between communities not sharing a mother tongue. However, differently from other international auxiliary languages (such as Esperanto, Volapuk, Interlingua and others), the UNL is not intended to be a human language, but a language for computers.

The universality of UNL is also related to the notions of "explicitness", "self-sufficiency" or "language-independence", because we understand that a constructed language cannot be "universal" if it is bound to any particular language.

The universality of UNL is expressed in the set of Universal Words, universal relations and universal attributes.