Re: [engelang] Re: What is the domain of engelangs? What's on topic for this mailing list?

 

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From: MatthewDeanMartin <matthewdeanmartin@hidden.email>
To: engelang@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 11:36 AM
Subject: [engelang] Re: What is the domain of engelangs? What's on topic for this mailing list?

 

Re: extensional & intensional
I couldn't find a layman description of Montagovian intensional logic. 

"Montagovian" is an adjective from "Montague", in this case Richard, 1931x - 1971, I think,  Certainly there is a Wikipedia entry under Montague Grammar.

I looked it up extensionality in wikipedia-- what a useful idea. I'm working on a set theory inspired language and realized I needed to come up with some syntax to express one set equals another-- now it seems I need to have two words for "is" -- an extensional one and and intensional one. I suppose it could disambiguate "Darth Vader is Lukes Father" (different labels) from "The men who baked the bricks are the men who built the tower of babel" (different recipes for identifying those elements.)

Nope; the "is" of identity is extensional in both cases, the who referring expressions refer to the same "thing" , Anakin Skywalker and the men of Babel respectively.  What is different in each case is the sense of the referring expressions, the intensional aspect of expressions.  Senses, whatever they are, can also be identical, but it is still extensional identity, they are the same intensional entity (not lots of clear cases).

re: languages based on something hard like advanced logic & users
Engineered languages though, are they being created for use, or to demonstrate that they exist and have certain interesting properties (sort of the way algebraists discover a new sort of group or ring or a topologist discovering a new shape, not for a user to necessarily do something with it)

Just the layman use of the word "engineer" implies that this is a field of languages for use. Even if the entry cost to use is high, it would seem by the name that an engelang isn't an exercise in pure (non-applied) math/logic or what have you.

For most engelangs I think it is important that someone could actually speak it and a couple could actually communicate in it.  The idea is usually that such and such a system could exist *as a language*, with all the communication that implies.  Of course, there are many different goals for engelangs, but most of them seem to be tied up with what is linguistically possible in some sense or other.  Even Ithikuil, which might just be considered an attempt to fit as many different distinctions as possible into as little space as possible does intend that someone might eventually somehow learn to speak it correctly (John Q says not him).

Re: Philosophical languages and their universal use
I think there were two ideas back when philosophical languages where popular-- the lingua franca part and the 1 true word for 1 true idea sort of idea. I think these ideas occurred together by accident. In any case, these guys seemed to want to use their language to talk to other philosophers as a better latin. If they were in a linguistically homogeneous place, they still would have invented the their languages, but the universalism part would have been skipped.

I agree the one true word part is primary, but the second follows immediately, since the only reason for having the right name is to be understood (and to understand, of course).  I think Wilkerson(?) would have recommended his language to the Royal Society even if it already published entirely in English.  The two seem inextricable for those who get into philolangs; I'm not sure, for example, which is foremost for Weilgart (or the little green man) in aUI.

--- In engelang@yahoogroups.com, John E Clifford wrote:
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> Well, you know that I say sometimes that all conlangs are engelangs, differing only in their blueprints.  But practically we can divide (and subdivide and ....) the blueprints by purpose.  If you plan to byuild a language that the whole world (or the important portion of it) learns along side their L1, so that they can talk together without further intermediaries, then you are in the auxlang business.  If you want to poohbah a story about some imginary locale by throwing a few words of the supposed local language, then you are at one end of one branch of the artlang game (at the other end, you write the whole story in Xardooseish).  Along the other branch are languages created purely (or at least mainly) for the joy of it or the hoped for beauty of the results, or the intricate history that gets built up in a collection of languages, or to hide you deepest thought from your prying baby sister.  Then there are engelangs, which typically have a
> "scientific" point, a design to test a theory, show that something can be done, and so on.  Logjam started out as a way to test the Sapir-Whorf Hypothsis and continued with varying other goals, which come down to making a language which keeps intact the monoparsing and logical form of some logical symbolism (Montagovian intensional logic with additions as the best current guess).  toki pona is a case of trying to find how small a language you can make to do some (unspecified) range of things and also how to make a cheerful language (skipping known critiques of that part).  Philosophic languages, while also thought of as auxlangs for the really rational (by their creators, who clearly include themselves), are designed to give everything its proper name (given some usually claimed to be be nonarbitrary initial conventions) so that it is always clear exactly what you are talking about, what you mean to say, and (this is yet a bit more speculative)
> whether what you say is true.  So, if you are not writing a novel or a diary or a work of art and don't want the world (or at least a coherent subcontinent) to speak your language, this is probably your place.  But notice that languages move more than occasionally, especially if they get second speakers.
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