Re: THEORY Ideal system of writing

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
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