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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Constructed language | 2/5 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:40:46.805051+00:00 | kb-cron |
Francis Lodwick's A Common Writing (1647) and The Groundwork or Foundation laid (or So Intended) for the Framing of a New Perfect Language and a Universal Common Writing (1652) Sir Thomas Urquhart's Ekskybalauron (1651) and Logopandecteision (1652) George Dalgarno's Ars signorum, 1661 John Wilkins' An Essay towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language, 1668 These early taxonomic constructed languages produced systems of hierarchical classification that were intended to result in both spoken and written expression. Leibniz had a similar purpose for his lingua generalis of 1678, aiming at a lexicon of characters upon which the user might perform calculations that would yield true propositions automatically, as a side-effect developing binary calculus. These projects were not only occupied with reducing or modelling grammar, but also with the arrangement of all human knowledge into "characters" or hierarchies, an idea that with the Enlightenment would ultimately lead to the Encyclopédie. Many of these 17th–18th century languages were pasigraphies, or purely written languages with no spoken form or a spoken form that would vary greatly according to the native language of the reader. Leibniz and the encyclopedists realized that it is impossible to organize human knowledge unequivocally in a tree diagram, and consequently to construct an a priori language based on such a classification of concepts. Under the entry Charactère, D'Alembert critically reviewed the projects of philosophical languages of the preceding century. After the Encyclopédie, projects for a priori languages moved more and more to the lunatic fringe. Individual authors, typically unaware of the history of the idea, continued to propose taxonomic philosophical languages until the early 20th century (e.g. Ro), but most recent engineered languages have had more modest goals; some are limited to a specific field, like mathematical formalism or calculus (e.g. Lincos and programming languages), others are designed for eliminating syntactical ambiguity (e.g., Loglan and Lojban) or maximizing conciseness (e.g., Ithkuil).
=== 19th and 20th centuries: auxiliary languages ===
Already in the Encyclopédie attention began to focus on a posteriori auxiliary languages. Joachim Faiguet de Villeneuve in the article on Langue wrote a short proposition of a "laconic" or regularized grammar of French. During the 19th century, a bewildering variety of such International Auxiliary Languages (IALs) were proposed, so that Louis Couturat and Léopold Leau in Histoire de la langue universelle (1903) reviewed 38 projects. The first of these that made any international impact was Volapük, proposed in 1879 by Johann Martin Schleyer; within a decade, 283 Volapükist clubs were counted all over the globe. However, disagreements between Schleyer and some prominent users of the language led to schism, and by the mid-1890s it fell into obscurity, making way for Esperanto, proposed in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof, and its descendants. Interlingua, the most recent auxlang to gain a significant number of speakers, emerged in 1951, when the International Auxiliary Language Association published its Interlingua–English Dictionary and an accompanying grammar. The success of Esperanto did not stop others from trying to construct new auxiliary languages, such as Leslie Jones' Eurolengo, which mixes elements of English and Spanish. Loglan (1955) and its descendants constitute a pragmatic return to the aims of the a priori languages, tempered by the requirement of usability of an auxiliary language. Thus far, these modern a priori languages have garnered only small groups of speakers. Robot Interaction Language (2010) is a spoken language that is optimized for communication between machines and humans. The major goals of ROILA are that it should be easily learnable by the human user, and optimized for efficient recognition by computer speech recognition algorithms.
== Categorization ==
=== By purpose === Most constructed languages can be divided by purpose:
Engineered language (engelang), further subdivided into logical language (loglang), philosophical language and experimental language, devised for experimentation in logic, philosophy, or linguistics International auxiliary language (auxlang or IAL), devised for interlinguistic or international communication Artistic language (artlang), devised to create aesthetic pleasure or humorous effect, including sub-categories such as secret languages, joke languages, and mystical languages The boundaries between these categories are by no means clear, and a language could fall into more than one category. A logical language created for aesthetic reasons would also be classifiable as an artistic language. One created with philosophical motives could also be used as an auxiliary language.
=== A priori and a posteriori === An a priori constructed language is one with features not based on an existing language, and an a posteriori language is the opposite. This categorization, however, is not absolute, as many constructed languages may be called a priori when considering some linguistic factors, and at the same time a posteriori when considering other factors. An a priori language has features that are invented or elaborated to work differently or to allude to different purposes. Some a priori languages are designed to be international auxiliary languages that remove what could be considered an unfair learning advantage for native speakers of a source language that would otherwise exist for a posteriori languages. Others, known as philosophical or taxonomic languages, try to categorize their vocabulary, either to express an underlying philosophy or to make it easier to recognize new vocabulary. Finally, many artistic languages, created for either personal use or for use in a fictional medium, employ consciously constructed grammars and vocabularies, and are best understood as a priori. Examples include: