Engineered language
|
|
Engineered languages, sometimes called engelangs, are constructed languages devised to test or prove some hypothesis about how languages work or might work. There are at least two subcategories, philosophical languages and logical languages (sometimes called loglangs).
Some engineered languages have been considered candidate global auxiliary languages, and some languages intended as international auxiliary languages have certain "engineered" aspects (in which they are more regular and systematic than their natural language sources).
| Contents |
Logical languages
Logical languages are meant to allow (or enforce) unambiguous statements. They are typically based on predicate logic but can be based on any system of formal logic. The two best-known logical languages are the predicate languages Loglan and its successor Lojban, which aim to eliminate syntactical ambiguity and reduce semantic ambiguity to a minimum.
Philosophical languages
Philosophical languages are designed to reflect some aspect of philosophy, particularly with respect to the nature or potential of language. John Wilkins' "Real Character" [1] (http://reliant.teknowledge.com/Wilkins/) and Edward Powell Foster's Ro [2] (http://www.langmaker.com/outpost/ro.htm) constructed their words using a taxonomic tree. John Quijaida's Ithkuil is designed for maximum conciseness. Suzette Haden Elgin's Láadan is designed to lexicalize and grammaticalize the concepts and distinctions important to women, based on muted group theory. Sonja Elen Kisa's Toki Pona is based on Taoism.
Examples of engineered languages
Human-usable
Knowledge representation
- CycL
- The Distributed Language Translation project used a "binary-coded" version of Esperanto as a pivot language between the source language and its translation.
- KIF
- Lincos
- Loom
- RDF
External links
- Garrett's Links to Logical Languages (http://minyeva.alkaline.org/links.htm)
- Conlang Directory: Logical (http://www.langmaker.com/db/condir_logical.htm)