Re: On the design of an ideal language

Jim Henry, On 01/05/2006 21:52:
[...]
> Sai seems to be saying (correct me if I'm misreading you, Sai)
> that the language should, in its most concise mode, use almost every
> possible word within its phonotactic limitations; and it should
> use this concise mode in non-noisy conditions, and a
> less concise mode with redundancy in noisier conditions.
> Actually, I suspect that even in the least-noisy real-world
> conditions you would still need a lot more redundancy
> than Sai seems to allow for (he appears to throw out a
> ballpark figure of 1% of unused space).  My engelang is
> designed so that no two morphemes differ by
> less than two phonemes.  I may back off from this extreme
> redundancy in a later revision -- for instance, perhaps
> no two morphemes *in the same distributional category*
> will differ by less than two distinctive features.  But in any
> case some criterion for a minimum degree of redundancy
> will figure in any future phase of this engelang.
This sounds like an additional principle, a Principle of Redundancy, which might be
split into two, a Principle of Noise Resistance, and a Principle of Lacuna
Resistance, the latter having to do with how much can be unambiguously
recovered from a fragmentary text. For me, I confine the operations of the
Principle of Noise Resistance strictly to the level of phonetic realization,
and eschew the Principle of Lacuna Resistance altogether. On the whole, this
doesn't worry me, since IMO the real benefits of the sort of ideal language my
principles define kick in in writing rather than speech.

On the matter of redundancy in your conlang, not only does it strike me as odd to
seek redundancy at the phonological rather than phonetic level, but it also
seems strange to treat all phonemes alike. It seems moderately reasonable that,
say, a word BA should block MA, but very strange that BA should block BI.

>> 5. Principle of Iconicity
>> The form of the utterance should resemble the meaning.
>
> Sai seems to be suggesting use of phonaesthemes in
> devising or selecting vocabulary, if I understand correctly.
> Otherwise, I'm not sure what this means at levels
> above the lexical.
It mainly operates at the morphological level, in terms of patterning in
sound--meaning correspondences.

>> 7. Principle of Semantic Conservation
>> "There should be no such thing as a "nonsense" or "incorrect" phrase."
>
> Paul Bennett has already said plenty about the problems
> with this.
Paul misunderstood. See my reply to him.

>> Goals not mentioned by Sai:
>>
>> 8. Principle of Concision.
>> The language should be as concise as possible *on average*. As a
>> benchmark, it should be able to achieve the average concision of the
>> concisest natlang, without compromising the Principle of Desired
>
> This seems to suggest a high phonological density -- a large
> phoneme inventory and phonotactics that allow a large number
> of possible syllables.
Yes, but also a design that allows things to be said in the smallest possible number of syllables.

>> 9. Principle of Expressiveness.
>> Everything expressible in a natlang should be expressible in the ideal
>> lang, with (in the main) no significant loss of concision.
>
> I reckon this goes without saying for any general-purpose
> conlang.
By default, but in fact a lot of conlangers aim to have the smallest possible
vocabulary size, or at least the smallest possible inventory of roots. The
Principle of Oligosynthesis, you might call it, at a stretch. If you adopt the
Principle of Oligosynthesis, then the Principle of Expressiveness is at minimum
subordinated to it.

>> 10. Principle of Variegation
>> The language should be as textured, variegated and many-flavoured as a
>> natlang (benchmark: English).
>
> This also seems to suggest a phonology that allows a wide
> variety of syllable shapes; what does it means on the grammatical
> level?  I would suggest that Esperanto, for instance, is pretty
> variegated and many-flavored grammatically (in it's Perlish
> "there's more than one way to do it" ethos); but one could
> go even further in, for instance, making various inflectional
> categories available and optional, and allowing a lot of leeway
> in trading off between cases and adpositions (perhaps for
> more and less precision)...  Semantically,
> I guess this might mean allowing the speaker a wide
> degree of latitude in selecting vague or pecise words.
To me the principle has mainly to do with wordshapes, but it also means that
there should not be high frequency collocations like "of the", or "in the event
of", and so forth. And in syntax, either there should be a rich array of
constructions or the syntax should be so minimal and flexible as to be
unobtrusive and not affect the degree of tonal homogeneity a text has.

> I'll note that neither of you mentioned one criterion:
> ease of learning.  Indeed, Sai's implied cluster of several
> languages (at least one per mode plus variations with
> more or less redundancy for more or less noisy conditions)
> would probably be as difficult as learning, if not a whole
> family of natural languages, at least several regular conlangs.
> And you both seem to imply a complex phonology that
> would be difficult for adult learners of many native languages,
> and (perhaps) a large root vocabulary that would take a
> long while for anyone to learn.
Quite so. Ease of learning is a complete irrelevance to me, except to the extent
that it is implied by the Principle of Least Effort (i.e. no gratuitous
irregularity). The principles of my ideal language are such that the end
product will likely be about as easily learnable as it can be, given the
principles it has to respect.

--And.

Reply