CICLing 2005 (www.CICLing.org) was the 6th Annual Conference on Intelligent Text Processing and Computational Linguistics. It was intended to provide a balanced view of the cutting-edge developments in both the theoretical foundations of computational linguistics and the practice of natural-language text processing with its numerous applications. A feature of CICLing conferences is their wide scope that covers nearly all areas of computational linguistics and all aspects of natural language processing applications. This year we were honored by the presence of our keynote speakers Christian Boitet (CLIPS-IMAG, Grenoble), Kevin Knight (ISI), Daniel Marcu (ISI), and Ellen Riloff (University of Utah), who delivered excellent extended lectures and organized vivid discussions and encouraging tutorials; their invited papers are published in this volume. Of 151 submissions received, 88 were selected for presentation; 53 as full papers and 35 as short papers, by exactly 200 authors from 26 countries: USA (15 papers); Mexico (12); China (9.5); Spain (7.5); South Korea (5.5); Singapore (5); Germany (4.8); Japan (4); UK (3.5); France (3.3); India (3); Italy (3); Czech Republic (2.5); Romania (2.3); Brazil, Canada, Greece, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland (1 each); Hong Kong (0.5); and Russia (0.5) including the invited papers. Internationally co-authored papers are counted in equal fractions.

The basis for this additional volume are the three volumes of the handbooks Dictionaries. An International Encyclopedia of Lexicography (HSK 5.1–5.3), published between 1989 and 1991. An updating has been perceived as an important desideratum for a considerable time. In the present Supplementary Volume the premises and subjects of HSK 5.1–5.3 are complemented by new articles that take account of the practice-internal and theoretical developments of the last 15 years. Special attention has been given to the following topics: the status and function of lexicographic reference works, the history of lexicography, the theory of lexicography, lexicographic processes, lexicographic training and lexicographic institutions, new metalexicographic methods, electronic and, especially, computer-assisted lexicography.

The Latin language has been the one constant in the cultural history of the West for more than two millennia. It has been the foundation of our education, and has defined the way in which we express our thoughts, our faith, and our knowledge of how the world functions. Indeed, the language has proved far more enduring than its empire in Rome, its use echoing on in the law codes of half the world, in the terminologies of modern science, and until forty years ago, in the liturgy of the Catholic Church. It is the unseen substance that makes us members of the Western world. In his erudite and entertaining "biography," Nicholas Ostler shows how and why (against the odds, through conquest from within and without) Latin survived and thrived even as its creators and other languages failed. Originally the dialect of Rome and its surrounds, Latin supplanted its neighbors to become, by conquest and settlement, the language of all Italy, and then of Western Europe and North Africa. Its cultural creep toward Greek in the East led it to copy and then ally with it in an unprecedented, but invincible combination: Greek theory and Roman practice, delivered through Latin, became the foundation of Western civilization. Christianity, a latecomer, then joined the alliance, and became vital to Latin's survival when the empire collapsed. Spoken Latin re-emerged as a host of new languages, from Portuguese and Spanish in the west to Romanian in the east. But a knowledge of Latin lived on as the common code of European thought, and inspired the founders of Europe's New World in the Americas. E pluribus unum. Illuminating the extravaganza of its past, Nicholas Ostler makes clear that, in a thousand echoes, Latin lives on, ad infinitum.

Exploring Transylvania by Török reconstructs the fissured scholarly landscape in one of the most culturally heterogeneous regions of the Habsburg Monarchy. The author creates an original model of the structure and historical dynamics of an East-Central European province in the republic of letters by tracing the activities of learned societies engaged in the exploration of their fatherland and their connections to national academic centers outside Transylvania. Analyzing the entangled history of the local German, Hungarian, and Romanian scholarly cultures, the book demonstrates how a persisting politics of difference, practiced by various political regimes over the long nineteenth century, solidified national hierarchies and exacerbated endemic tensions both in the Transylvanian intellectual milieus and in scholarship itself.