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Logopandecteision is a 1653 parodic book by Sir Thomas Urquhart, detailing his plans for the creation of an artificial language by that name.
The book consists of several distinct sections, most notably including a list of the language's "66 unparalleled excellences"; the rest consists of polemics against Urquhart's creditors, the Church of Scotland, and others whom he claims prevented him from publishing his "perfected language" through neglect and wrongdoings. Where the book deals with the plan of Logopandecteision, it recalls his earlier work Eskybalauron .
It has been claimed that the entire work was intended as a kind of elaborate practical joke. Under the alternate spelling Logopandekteision, extracts are sometimes presented which make it appear that Urquhart seriously undertook the creation of a constructed language.
The grammar of the language described in the text is somewhat reminiscent of the extensive and intricate taxonomic structures of other philosophical languages, and of the baroque grammar of later projects such as Volapük. Urquhart promises twelve parts of speech: each declinable in eleven cases, four numbers, eleven genders (including god, goddess, man, woman, animal, etc.); and conjugable in eleven tenses, seven moods, and four voices.
Many impossible qualities are claimed, such as that any number of any magnitude could be expressed in this language by a single word, so concisely that a number with more digits in traditional notation than "there might be grains of sand containable from the center of the earth, to the highest heavens" would be expressible by just two letters. Urquhart at one point promises: "here is no Language in the world, but for every word thereof, it will afford you another of the same signification, of equal syllables with it, and beginning or ending, or both, with vowels or consonants as it doth"; and that "in translating verses of any vernaculary tongue, such as Italian, French, Spanish, Slavonian, Dutch, Irish, English, or whatever it be, it affords you of the same signification, syllable for syllable, and in the closure of each line a rime, as in the original". Other remarkable assertions include that this language could be used translate any idiom in any other language, without any alteration of the literal sense, but still fully representing the intention.
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.
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Thomas Reid was a religiously trained Scottish philosopher best known for his philosophical method, his theory of perception, and its wide implications on epistemology, and as the developer and defender of an agent-causal theory of free will. He also focused extensively on ethics, theory of action, language and philosophy of mind.
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, involving analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context.
Zulu, or IsiZulu as an endonym, is a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch spoken and indigenous to Southern Africa. It is the language of the Zulu people, with about 13.56 million native speakers, who primarily inhabit the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa, and it is understood by over 50% of its population. It became one of South Africa's 12 official languages in 1994.
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John Langshaw Austin, OBE, FBA was a British philosopher of language and leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy, best known for developing the theory of speech acts.
An Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language is the best-remembered of the numerous works of John Wilkins, in which he expounds a new universal language, meant primarily to facilitate international communication among scholars, but envisioned for use by diplomats, travelers, and merchants as well. Unlike many universal language schemes of the period, it was meant merely as an auxiliary to—not a replacement of—existing natural languages.
Sir Thomas Urquhart (1611–1660) was a Scottish aristocrat, writer, and translator. He is best known for his translation of the works of French Renaissance writer François Rabelais to English.
Yuchi or Euchee is the language of the Tsoyaha, also known as the Yuchi people, now living in Oklahoma. Historically, they lived in what is now known as the southeastern United States, including eastern Tennessee, western Carolinas, northern Georgia, and Alabama, during the period of early European colonization. Many speakers of the Yuchi language became allied with the Muscogee Creek when they migrated into their territory in Georgia and Alabama. They were forcibly relocated with them to Indian Territory in the early 19th century.
Wiyot or Soulatluk is an Algic language spoken by the Wiyot people of Humboldt Bay, California. The language's last native speaker, Della Prince, died in 1962.
Ithkuil is an experimental constructed language created by John Quijada. It is designed to express more profound levels of human cognition briefly yet overtly and clearly, particularly about human categorization. It is a cross between an a priori philosophical and a logical language. It tries to minimize the vagueness and semantic ambiguity in natural human languages. Ithkuil is notable for its grammatical complexity and extensive phoneme inventory, the latter being simplified in an upcoming redesign. The name "Ithkuil" is an anglicized form of Iţkuîl, which in the original form roughly meant "hypothetical representation of a language." Quijada states he did not create Ithkuil to be auxiliary or used in everyday conversations. Instead, he wanted the language for more elaborate and profound fields where more insightful thoughts are expected, such as philosophy, arts, science, and politics.
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The indeterminacy of translation is a thesis propounded by 20th-century American analytic philosopher W. V. Quine. The classic statement of this thesis can be found in his 1960 book Word and Object, which gathered together and refined much of Quine's previous work on subjects other than formal logic and set theory. The indeterminacy of translation is also discussed at length in his Ontological Relativity. Crispin Wright suggests that this "has been among the most widely discussed and controversial theses in modern analytical philosophy". This view is endorsed by Hilary Putnam, who states that it is "the most fascinating and the most discussed philosophical argument since Kant's Transcendental Deduction of the Categories".
Philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, the constitution of sentences, concepts, learning, and thought.
Bhartṛhari, was an Indian philosopher and poet known for his contributions to the fields of linguistics, grammar, and philosophy. He is believed to have been born in the 5th century in Ujjain, Malwa, India. He decided to live a monastic life and find a higher meaning but was unable to detach from worldly life. He lived as a yogi in Ujjain until his death.
Toki Pona is a philosophical artistic constructed language known for its small vocabulary, simplicity, and ease of acquisition. It was created by Sonja Lang, a Canadian linguist and translator, to simplify her thoughts and communication. The first drafts were published online in 2001, while the complete form was published in the 2014 book Toki Pona: The Language of Good. Lang also released a supplementary dictionary, the Toki Pona Dictionary, in July 2021, describing the language as used by its community of speakers. In January of 2024, a third book was released, a Toki Pona adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, written in sitelen pona. These three books are named pu, ku, and su respectively in Toki Pona.
Solresol, originally called Langue universelle and then Langue musicale universelle, is a constructed language devised by François Sudre, beginning in 1817. His major book on it, Langue Musicale Universelle, was published after his death in 1866, though he had already been publicizing it for some years. Solresol enjoyed a brief spell of popularity, reaching its pinnacle with Boleslas Gajewski's 1902 publication of Grammaire du Solresol.
A constructed language is a language whose phonology, grammar, orthography, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. A constructed language may also be referred to as an artificial, planned or invented language, or a fictional language. Planned languages are languages that have been purposefully designed; they are the result of deliberate, controlling intervention and are thus of a form of language planning.
Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs, or Voice and Phenomenon: Introduction to the Problem of the Sign in Husserl's Phenomenology, is a book about the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, published in 1967 alongside Derrida's Of Grammatology and Writing and Difference. In Speech and Phenomena, Derrida articulates his mature relationship to Husserl, putting forward an argument concerning Husserl's phenomenological project as a whole in relation to a key distinction in Husserl's theory of language in the Logical Investigations (1900–1901) and how this distinction relates to his description of internal time consciousness. Derrida also develops key discussions of the terms deconstruction and différance. Derrida commented that Speech and Phenomena is the "essay I value the most". Derrida's best known work on Husserl's phenomenology, it is widely considered one of his most important philosophical works.