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Re: THEORY Ideal system of writing

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Thursday, August 12, 2004, 17:28
On Thursday, August 12, 2004, at 04:18 , Ph. D. wrote:

> Gary Shannon wrote:
[snip]
>> My idea was for each symbol to represent some basic >> notion, utterly independant of the sound one makes in >> any particular language for that notion. By stringing >> elemental notions together more speicific words are >> formed, but the symbols contain no hint at the >> pronounciation, thus the same written language might >> be pronounced in a variety of different ways. > > > This reminds me of the conlang aUI by John Weilgart. > This language has 31 basic symbols which are combined > to form more words. Although each symbol has a sound > assigned to it so the language can be spoken, the words > are formed from the symbols.
This reminds of the ideal language spoken by an ideal community described in Gabriel de Foigny's novel "La terre austral connue" of 1676. This language also used a very limited battery of primitives which are combined to express every possible experience. But I guess I should add a caveat: Foigny was creating a parody of philosophic languages of Delgarno, Wilkins and others. Apparently, the idea of that there are universal notions, common to the language & thought of all peoples, and that these concepts can be combined to express all experiences, truth etc. is older than the 17th century. In the early 14th century Ramon Lull (aka Raymond Lully) put forward such ideas in his "Ars Magna" (1305-8). Ray =============================================== http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown ray.brown@freeuk.com (home) raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk (work) =============================================== "A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language." J.G. Hamann, 1760

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Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>