This is a blog.

Starting to write this part suggests the end of this thesis. Though writing it down only occupied one month time or so, this thesis does contain one-year research on the topic of textual entailment, about which none of  my friends outside the community knew before my explanations. Anyway, I am proud of this work, so I would like to show the contributions of other people than me here.

My parents, WANG Dingzhu and ZHU Qunhuan, deserve the first place, since without them, I am not sure whether I would still be here writing the acknowledgements. My father has taught me how to THINK independently; and my mother has told me how to LIVE enjoyably. They are such great parents who have given me a joyful childhood, a warm family, and "an extremely robust backup"! "爸爸妈妈，谢谢你们！"

A huge DANKE to my supervisor PD Dr. Günter Neumann, whose name would have been put on the front page by me if it were allowed. He has contributed A LOT to this thesis. All the brainstorming, discussions, debates, … will be a good memory of mine, not to mention those interesting topics, clever ideas, funny tricks, and silly mistakes. I would like to cite some of his famous words here: "I cannot control you, but I recommend you to work!", "My job is to keep you busy.", "Yes, I know you’re busy now. But could you please do this … task?", … more details cf. Neumann and Wang (to appear).

Another huge DANKE to my advisor Prof. Dr. Hans Uszkoreit during this whole master time, who has given me a lot of help, not only for the thesis, but also the whole two years abroad. Though we did not meet frequently, I can still remember those heuristic questions and discussions, which always lead me into a deeper thought of the problems. Apart from the research part, he has taken a great care of my life here, helping me with finding the hiwi job in DFKI, advising me on my future plan, inviting me to his Christmas party, …

I would like to say "非常感谢！" to my former supervisor in China, Prof. Dr. YAO Tianfang. It is he that recommended me to come here to join in this nice master program; and it is he that gave me much advice on how to do scientific writing. I want to say "Danke!" to Prof. Dr. Manfred Pinkal for giving us an interesting seminar on exactly the same topic as this thesis, which I enjoyed a lot. "Danke!" to Aljoscha Burchardt and "Grazie!" to Marco Pennacchiotti for all the discussions and jokes on RTE.

A sweet "Ευχαριστίες!" to Konstantina Garoufi. She is such a great friend with whom I can share both happiness and sadness. Inside the thesis, we have discovered a lot of nice examples of RTE; outside the thesis, chocolates, dinners, and ice-creams are the main topics. A big "谢谢！" to ZHANG Yajing for all the coffee breaks (especially the delicious cookies) we had together. A special "感谢" to CHENG Xiwen for caring about my living during the thesis time. "¡Grazias!" to my "boss-mate" Alejandro Figueroa, who always has innovative ideas and passion for work.

Two big "Xiexie!"s to Trevor Benjamin and Lisa Macwan, who have helped me with my poor English. As the first readers of my thesis, they have made great efforts to understand what I was talking about. I am really sorry for spoiling their holidays and weekends, since even at the last moment, they were still proofreading some of the chapters! Two "多谢！"s to ZHANG Yi and SHEN Dan, a "Thank you!" to Jennifer Moore,  and a "Dank je!" to Antske Fokkens for their reading my previous conference papers, which form up the main parts of this thesis.

Life has other things than the thesis. Many thanks to my jogging friends: four "Danke!"s to Michael Roth, Christian Sänger, Teresa Herrmann, and Anna Mündelein; a "Cпасибо!" to Olga Kukina, a "Shukria!" to Danish Nadeem, and a "谢谢！" to DING Wei. More thanks to my dinner friends: a "Duozai！" to Shirley Siu, two "谢谢！"s to YE Min and FU Yu. A special "Merci!" to our schwenker chef, Pierre Lison, for brining us the evil barbeque parties.

Last but not least, I would like to thank all the friends I met and all the audience of my presentations in AAAI 2007, ACL-PASCAL Workshop (RTE-3), and TaCoS 2007. If you have not seen your name, please tell me and I will thank you face to face.

I will print my thesis out today, bind it tomorrow morning and submit it. The following month will be my vacation:

Sept. 20th ~ Sept. 24th: Hong Kong
Oct. 3rd ~ Oct. 8th: Trip to somewhere with my parents
Oct. 13th ~ Oct. 15th: Shanghai
Oct. 19th ~ Oct. 23rd: Shanghai
Other time I will be in Nanjing.

I’m free for any kind of meals 😉