Koalang

Last updated

Koalang is a fictional language in Janusz A. Zajdel's 1984 novel Paradyzja . [1] The novel is set on a space station where activity is tracked by automatic cameras and analysed, mostly, by computers. To avoid surveillance, the station's inhabitants adopt an Aesopian language which is full of metaphors that are impossible for computers to grasp. The meaning of every sentence depended on the context. For example, "I dreamt about blue angels last night" means "I was visited by the police last night."

The software that analyzes sentences is self-learning. Thus, a phrase that is used to describe something metaphorically should not be used again in the same context.

The ko-al in koalang derives from the Polish words kojarzeniowo-aluzyjny ("associative-allusive"). [2] Zajdel paid a tribute to George Orwell's newspeak and to Aldous Huxley, by naming one of the main characters Nikor Orley Huxwell.

In the 1980s, the youth magazine Na Przełaj ("Short Cut") printed rock lyrics in a column titled KOALANG, hinting that the songs' texts contained content camouflaged from censorship. [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ambiguity</span> Type of uncertainty of meaning in which several interpretations are plausible

Ambiguity is the type of meaning in which a phrase, statement, or resolution is not explicitly defined, making for several interpretations; others describe it as a concept or statement that has no real reference. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It is thus an attribute of any idea or statement whose intended meaning cannot be definitively resolved, according to a rule or process with a finite number of steps..

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrzej Sapkowski</span> Polish fantasy writer (born 1948)

Andrzej Sapkowski is a Polish fantasy writer, essayist, translator and a trained economist. He is best known for his six-volume series of books The Witcher, which revolves around the eponymous "witcher," a monster-hunter, Geralt of Rivia. It began with the publication of Last Wish (1990), and was completed with the publication of standalone prequel novel Season of Storms (2013). The saga has been popularized through television, stage, comic books, video games and translated into 37 languages making him the second most-translated Polish science fiction and fantasy writer after Stanisław Lem.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Context-free grammar</span> Type of formal grammar

In formal language theory, a context-free grammar (CFG) is a formal grammar whose production rules can be applied to a nonterminal symbol regardless of its context. In particular, in a context-free grammar, each production rule is of the form

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ELIZA</span> Early natural language processing computer program

ELIZA is an early natural language processing computer program developed from 1964 to 1967 at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum. Created to explore communication between humans and machines, ELIZA simulated conversation by using a pattern matching and substitution methodology that gave users an illusion of understanding on the part of the program, but had no representation that could be considered really understanding what was being said by either party. Whereas the ELIZA program itself was written (originally) in MAD-SLIP, the pattern matching directives that contained most of its language capability were provided in separate "scripts", represented in a lisp-like representation. The most famous script, DOCTOR, simulated a psychotherapist of the Rogerian school, and used rules, dictated in the script, to respond with non-directional questions to user inputs. As such, ELIZA was one of the first chatterbots and one of the first programs capable of attempting the Turing test.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Formal language</span> Sequence of words formed by specific rules

In logic, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics, a formal language consists of words whose letters are taken from an alphabet and are well-formed according to a specific set of rules called a formal grammar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janusz Zajdel</span> Polish writer

Janusz Andrzej Zajdel was a Polish science fiction author, second in popularity in Poland to Stanisław Lem. His major genres were social science fiction and dystopia. His main recurring theme involved the gloomy prospects for a space environment into which mankind carried totalitarian ideas and habits: Red Space Republics, or Space Labor Camps, or both. His heroes desperately try to find meaning in the world around them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metaphor</span> Figure of speech of implicit comparison

A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are usually meant to create a likeness or an analogy.

Natural language processing (NLP) is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related to information retrieval, knowledge representation and computational linguistics, a subfield of linguistics. Typically data is collected in text corpora, using either rule-based, statistical or neural-based approaches in machine learning and deep learning.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Self-reference</span> Sentence, idea or formula that refers to itself

Self-reference is a concept that involves referring to oneself or one's own attributes, characteristics, or actions. It can occur in language, logic, mathematics, philosophy, and other fields.

In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb, aside from an auxiliary verb, whose context does not entail a transitive object. That lack of an object distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs are typically considered within a class apart from modal verbs and defective verbs.

In analytic philosophy, a fundamental distinction is made between the use of a term and the mere mention of it. Many philosophical works have been "vitiated by a failure to distinguish use and mention". The distinction can sometimes be pedantic, especially in simple cases where it is obvious.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janusz A. Zajdel Award</span> Polish science fiction and fantasy award

The Janusz A. Zajdel Award, often called just Zajdel, is the annual award given by the Polish science fiction and fantasy fandom for the best stories published in the previous year.

Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is the process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar. The term parsing comes from Latin pars (orationis), meaning part.

In literature and writing, stylistic devices are a variety of techniques used to give an auxiliary meaning, idea, or feeling.

<i>Paradyzja</i> 1984 novel by Janusz Zajdel

Paradyzja is a 1984 science fiction novel by Polish writer Janusz A. Zajdel.

In linguistics, the term lexis designates the complete set of all possible words in a language, or a particular subset of words that are grouped by some specific linguistic criteria. For example, the general term English lexis refers to all words of the English language, while more specific term English religious lexis refers to a particular subset within English lexis, encompassing only words that are semantically related to the religious sphere of life.

<i>Black Oceans</i> 2001 novel by Jacek Dukaj

Czarne oceany is a science fiction novel by Polish writer Jacek Dukaj, published in Poland by Supernowa in 2001. The novel fits in the hard science fiction genre, describing the late-21st century Earth facing technological singularity. The novel received the prime Polish award for sci-fi literature, Janusz A. Zajdel Award, for 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tomasz Kołodziejczak</span>

Tomasz Kołodziejczak is a Polish science fiction and fantasy writer, screenwriter, publisher and editor of books, comics and role-playing games.

Sam Glucksberg was a Canadian professor in the Psychology Department at Princeton University in New Jersey, known for his works on figurative language: metaphors, irony, sarcasm, and idioms. He is particularly known for manipulating the Candle Problem experiment which had participants figure out the best way to erect a candle on a wall. Along with performing experiments, Glucksberg has also written Understanding Figurative Language: From Metaphors to Idioms, published by Oxford University Press in 2001.

<i>The Old Axolotl</i> 2015 novel by Jacek Dukaj

The Old Axolotl is a 2015 digital-only novel by Polish science-fiction author Jacek Dukaj. The novel was released in Polish on March 10, 2015, and shortly afterward, on March 24 that year, in English. It has been described as "an experiment in reading the electronic literature of the future".

References