Constructed Languages

[gusl]

Is it possible to invent a human language which is:

(1) easy to learn
(2) fully expressive
(3) logical: free of linguistic ambiguity

how many of the above can you fulfill at the same time?

Toki Pona: 120 words, pidgin
LojBan
Esperanto
Basic English: 850 words


Maybe this is a question for the folks at the ILLC.

Comments

[thepublicguy.livejournal.com]

A short answer: no.

I would argue that ambiguity is a result of the freedom needed for language to be fully expressive.

Let's say a language could be fully expressive at time t 1. Customs change. Technology advances. It is no longer fully expressive at time t 2.

To make matters more complicated, customs have changed in different ways in different places. Technology has advanced in slightly different ways at different speeds in different places.

Local innovation in language allows for language to keep pace with changes in life. But it introduces elements of mutual unintelligibility and/or slight differences in the connotations of words as they are used for new situations that are different for different groups of people.

Central control or co-ordination of language would slow down this adaptation and lead to the loss of expressive power that comes from inspired individuals innovating and having other people free to adopt or not their innovations. See the deadening effects of central co-ordination in Orwell's newspeak.

Just a thought.

[thepublicguy.livejournal.com]

Apart from lexical ambiguity as above, there are advantages to structural ambiguity. Innovations in structure allow people to express group membership and to distinguish themselves from others. It creates a good feeling.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

hm... I meant it as a theoretical possibility question:
at any given time, place, etc. does there exist a language in the space of possible languages which meets those constraints?

Do you think two of the constraints could be met simultaneously?

[candid.livejournal.com]

Human brains are not perfectly logical, I don't see why you'd expect (or want) human languages to be.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

After living enough, I've learned not to expect languages (or people) to be logical. I guess I used to assume by default that people were like me.

But I shouldn't have to tell you why it's desirable to improve inter-human communication.

Our minds seem tolerant of a wide range of "illogical" linguistic structures, as long as they're learned during childhood. But it would be nice to be able to express things as precisely as you want and with little effort. In other words, I want a faithful, efficient code. An interesting question is: how far can we go towards that before it becomes incompatible with the human brain?

But I'm not *THAT* eager to try and change people's language. As one of my links says: Esperanto is a very neat solution looking for a problem.
Basic English, however, seems to be a good solution to a real problem.
Hm.. okay, that's illogical, but I think you understand.