A philosophical language is any constructed language that is constructed from first principles, sometimes following a classification. It is considered a type of engineered language. Philosophical languages were popular in Early Modern times, partly motivated by the goal of revising normal language for philosophical (i.e. scientific) purposes. The term ideal language is sometimes used near-synonymously, though more modern philosophical languages such as Toki Pona are less likely to involve such an exalted claim of perfection. The axioms and grammars of the languages together differ from commonly spoken languages.
In most philosophical languages, words are constructed from a limited set of morphemes that are treated as "elemental" or "fundamental". "Philosophical language" is sometimes used synonymously with "taxonomic language". Vocabularies of oligosynthetic languages are made of compound words, which are coined from a small (theoretically minimal) set of morphemes. Languages like Toki Pona similarly use a limited set of root words but produce phrases which remain series of distinct words.
Foreseen in Descartes' letter to Mersenne of November 20, 1629, work on philosophical languages was pioneered by Francis Lodwick (A Common Writing, 1647; 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 ( Logopandecteision , 1652), George Dalgarno (Ars signorum, 1661), and John Wilkins ( An Essay towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language , 1668). Those were systems of hierarchical classification that were intended to result in both spoken and written expression. In 1855, English writer George Edmonds modified Wilkins' system, leaving its taxonomy intact, but changing the grammar, orthography and pronunciation of the language in an effort to make it easier to speak and to read. [1]
Gottfried Leibniz created lingua generalis (or lingua universalis) in 1678, aiming to create a lexicon of characters upon which the user might perform calculations that would yield true propositions automatically; as a side effect he developed binary calculus. [2]
These projects aimed not only to reduce or model grammar, but also to arrange all human knowledge into "characters" or hierarchies. This idea ultimately led to the Encyclopédie , in the Age of Enlightenment. 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 fringe. However, from time to time, some authors continued to propose philosophical languages until the 20th century (for example, Ro, aUI) or even in the 21st century (Toki Pona).
A thesaurus, sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings, sometimes as a hierarchy of broader and narrower terms, sometimes simply as lists of synonyms and antonyms. They are often used by writers to help find the best word to express an idea:
...to find the word, or words, by which [an] idea may be most fitly and aptly expressed
An international auxiliary language is a language meant for communication between people from all different nations, who do not share a common first language. An auxiliary language is primarily a foreign language and often a constructed language. The concept is related to but separate from the idea of a lingua franca that people must use to communicate. The study of international auxiliary languages is interlinguistics.
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.
Ro is an a priori constructed language created by Rev. Edward Powell Foster beginning in 1904.
An artistic language, or artlang, is a constructed language designed for aesthetic and phonetic pleasure. Constructed languages can be artistic to the extent that artists use it as a source of creativity in art, poetry, calligraphy or as a metaphor to address themes such as cultural diversity and the vulnerability of the individual in a globalizing world. They can also be used to test linguistical theories, such as Linguistic relativity.
Engineered languages are constructed languages devised to test or prove some hypotheses about how languages work or might work. There are at least three subcategories, philosophical languages, logical languages, and experimental languages. Raymond Brown describes engineered languages as "languages that are designed to specified objective criteria, and modeled to meet those criteria".
Although not used in general linguistic theory, the term preverb is used in Caucasian, Caddoan, Athabaskan, and Algonquian linguistics to describe certain elements prefixed to verbs. In the context of Indo-European languages, the term is usually used for separable verb prefixes.
Universal language may refer to a hypothetical or historical language spoken and understood by all or most of the world's people. In some contexts, it refers to a means of communication said to be understood by all humans. It may be the idea of an international auxiliary language for communication between groups speaking different primary languages. In other conceptions, it may be the primary language of all speakers, or the only existing language. Some religious and mythological traditions state that there was once a single universal language among all people, or shared by humans and supernatural beings.
The longest word in any given language depends on the word formation rules of each specific language, and on the types of words allowed for consideration.
aUI is a philosophical, a priori language created in the 1950s by W. John Weilgart, Ph.D., a philosopher and psychoanalyst originally from Vienna, Austria. He described it as "the Language of Space", connoting universal communication, and published the fourth edition of the textbook in 1979; a philosophic description of each semantic element of the language was published in 1975.
Francis Lodwick FRS was a pioneer of a priori languages.
A lingua ignota was described by the 12th-century abbess Hildegard of Bingen, who apparently used it for mystical purposes. It consists of vocabulary with no known grammar; the only known text is individual words embedded in Latin. To write it, Hildegard used an alphabet of 23 letters denominated litterae ignotae.
The Latin term characteristica universalis, commonly interpreted as universal characteristic, or universal character in English, is a universal and formal language imagined by Gottfried Leibniz able to express mathematical, scientific, and metaphysical concepts. Leibniz thus hoped to create a language usable within the framework of a universal logical calculation or calculus ratiocinator.
Balaibalan is the oldest known constructed language.
La ricerca della lingua perfetta nella cultura europea (The Search for the Perfect Language (the Making of Europe); trans. James Fentress) is a 1993 book by Umberto Eco about attempts to devise an ideal language. The writing is essayistic and uses the myth of Babel as a paradigm for connecting linguistic and social practices. Emphasizing that the quest for a perfect language has never been devoid of ideological motivation, Eco outlines some objections to the idea and suggests that an International Auxiliary Language, such as Esperanto, is a more realistic project. He points out that the impossible quest has had some useful side effects (taxonomy, scientific notations etc.) but dwells mostly on exotic proposals. Lengthy passages are devoted to Dante, Lull, Kircher, various 17th-century authors and a few less well-known names from later times. The contemporary project for a politically and culturally unified Europe provides the perspective for a more serious consideration of the theme.
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, titled “su” which is a Toki Pona adaptation of the Wizard of Oz story, written in Sitelen Pona. These three books are named pu, ku, and su respectively in Toki Pona.
George Edmonds was an English teacher, lawyer, and scholar. He is principally remembered for his book A Universal Alphabet, Grammar, and Language. He was also a reforming journalist and leading Radical.
Odia grammar is the study of the morphological and syntactic structures, word order, case inflections, verb conjugation and other grammatical structures of Odia, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in South Asia.
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.