mac@uvacs.UUCP (10/08/83)
For more on "logical" languages, see an essay by J.L.Borges "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins"[1]. It mentions Volapu"k and Interlingua, both historical attempts at universal languages. The main subject of the essay is John Wilkins language, begun in 1664. To quote... Wilkins divided the universe into forty categories or classes, which were then subdivisible into differences, subdivisible in turn into species. To each class he assigned a monosyllable of two letters; to each difference, a consonant; to each species, a vowel. For example, /de/ means element; /deb/ the first of the elements, fire; /deba/ a portion of the element of fire, a flame. In a similar language invented by Letellier (1850) /a/ means animal; /ab/, mammalian; /abi/, herbivorous; /abiv/, equine; /abo/, carnivorous; /aboj/, feline; /aboje/, cat; etc. In the language of Bonifacio Sotos Ochando (1854) /imaba/ means building; /imaca/, brothel; /imafe/, hospital; /imafo/, pesthouse; /imari/, house; /imaru/, country estate; /imede/, pillar; /imedo/, post; /imego/, floor; /imela/, ceiling; /imogo/, window; /bire/, bookbinder; /birer/, to bind books. (I found this in a book published in Buenos Aires in 1886, the "Curso de lengua universal" by Dr. Pedro Mata.) These three languages may all be inventions of Borges. Further on he writes... These ambiguities, redundancies, and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled "Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge". On those remote pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's-hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance. What strikes one about this list, says M. Foucault [2], is the stark impossibility of thinking that. The essay closes with a quote from Chesterton [3] Man knows that there are in the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless than the colours of an autumn forest; ... Yet he seriously believes that these things can every one of them, in all their tones and semi- tones, in all their blends and unions, be accurately represented by an arbitrary system of grunts and squeals. He believes that an ordinary civilized stockbroker can really produce out of his own inside noises which denote all the mysteries of memory, and all the agonies of desire. ... Well, a lot of them anyway. Alex Colvin ARPA: mac.uvacs@UDel-Relay CS: mac@virginia USE: ...uvacs!mac ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [1] Not the best translation is "Borges: A Reader", Dutton. [2] in the beginning of "The Order of Things". [3] "G.F. Watts".