thanks-en.html

<p>
I am grateful to many many people for their help, support, and 
inspiration while working on this project.   
I hope I'm not missing anyone important!
</p>
<ul>
<li>First, a special dedication to my friend <b>Doğan Koslu</b>.  The hardest part about working on this project was the constant feeling that 
no one would appreciate the hacking that went into it!
It definitely reminded me of some of the very-hard-but-ridiculous code
we wrote in L.A. back in the day.
Knowing that at least one person would take the time to 
understand what's going on behind the scenes kept me going on several occasions
when I was ready to throw in the towel.</li>
<li>To my St. Louis-based research assistants <b>Madeleine Cáit Scannell</b> (age 8) and <b>Kevin Patrick Scannell, Jr.</b> (age 6). 
<a href="mcskps.jpg">See a photo</a>.  At some point last year I explained to them what it was that I was working on, and we talked about examples of ambiguous words.  Since then it has become an ongoing parlor game around our house to try to come up with examples of ambiguities that aren't in Daddy's database.   Together they've come up with literally hundreds of new senses including many that the researchers at Princeton had missed (e.g. “popup”: window, book, or baseball)!  I wish my university students were as bright and enthusiastic as you both!</li>
<li><b>Gail Scannell</b> did a huge amount of data entry for this project,
knowing that I would be unhappy with the results if I paid a
disinterested third party to do it.   More importantly, thanks for putting 
up with my late hours, absent-mindedness, and eccentric interests, and
for reminding me what's most important (ultimate).  You make
it all worth it!</li>
<li>To <b>Luis Henrique Fagundes</b> and the rest of
<b>the <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/hacklabr/morcego">Morcego</a> team</b>
for their amazing network browser, and for supporting free software
by releasing it under the LGPL.</li>
<li>Even though this project was undertaken without any direct financial
support, I am grateful to <b><a target="_blank" href="https://www.forasnagaeilge.ie/">Foras na Gaeilge</a></b> for
their support of my earlier work on grammar checking with
<a target="_blank" href="https://cruinneog.com/">Cruinneog</a>.
I have worked on developing computational resources for
more than 20 minority languages, and Irish may be in the
best position, looking forward, of any of them.
This is due in large part to the
fact that nearly all of the language technology for Irish 
is freely available.  This includes all of my work of course, but also
valuable databases like
<a target="_blank" href="http://www.acmhainn.ie/">acmhainn.ie</a>
and 
<a target="_blank" href="https://www.tearma.ie/">tearma.ie</a>
upon which I've relied quite heavily, and which were
created with support from Foras.</li>
<li>Thanks to the researchers at the
<b>Princeton University <a target="_blank" href="https://cogsci.princeton.edu/">Cognitive Science Laboratory</a></b> for creating 
the original English WordNet and for making it freely available.</li>
<li>Also tremendously useful were the synset mappings between 
versions of the Princeton WordNet produced
by the NLP Research Group
at the <b>Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya</b>.</li>
<li>This project was created using only free software.  
So thanks to
<b>Richard Stallman</b>, <b>Larry Wall</b>, 
whoever wrote the first version of <i>sed</i>,
and thousands of others.   Also, it was completed
about 300% faster than it would have been otherwise 
thanks to <b>Bram Moolenaar</b>, the author of
<a target="_blank" href="https://www.vim.org/"><i>vim</i></a>.  Consider giving a donation
to help
<a target="_blank" href="https://iccf-holland.org/iccf.html">needy children in Uganda</a>
in Bram's honor.</li>
<li>I assign a “working name” to each of my projects before it is
released.   The LSG was originally dubbed “BLA”, for “Battle of Los Angeles”,
which is the CD I was listening to when I wrote the kernel of the
software in late 2006.  So thanks,
<b><a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_Against_the_Machine">Rage Against the Machine</a></b>.</li>
<li>Finally, thanks to the many Irish speakers who have been supportive,
in one way or another, of my other projects, especially
Diarmaid Mac Mathúna, Séamus Ó&nbsp;Ciardhuáin,
Elaine Uí&nbsp;Dhonnchadha, Conn Ó&nbsp;Muineacháin, 
Vincent Morley, Caoimhín Ó&nbsp;Donnaíle (from Skye),
Kevin Donnelly (from Wales),
Liam Ó&nbsp;Cuinneagáin, Iarla Mac Aodha Bhuí, Brian Ó&nbsp;Broin,
Ciarán Ó&nbsp;Duibhín,
and
Peadar Ó&nbsp;Guilín.</li>
</ul>