Talk:Philosophical language

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Logopandecteision[edit]

Thomas Urquhart's Logopandecteision is probably better described as a satire on philosophical languages than a straightforward project for a philosophical language. See the linked Wp article. --Jim Henry 17:40, 1 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merge with a priori (languages)[edit]

As a lay person, the article seems to be about a priori (languages). I propose a merge of the two articles. If there is a distinction between them, it should be explained clearly in both pages, and perhaps "A priori language" should not redirect to "Philosophical language". -Pgan002 10:42, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A priori languages are constructed languages where the vocabulary is invented directly, rather than being derived from other existing languages (as with Esperanto or Interlingua). A philosophical language is one where the words are constructed out of a limited set of morphemes that are treated as "elemental" or fundamental. "Philosophical language" is more or less synonymous with "taxonomic language". Philosphical languages are almost always a priori, but not all a priori languages are philosophical. Tolkein's Quenya and Sindarin, and Okrand's Klingon, are both a priori but nobody would call them philosophical: they are meant to seem like natural languages, even though they have no relation to any natural languages. — Gwalla | Talk 01:58, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really agree that Quenya and Sindarin are a priori. Queya is related to Finnish and Latin, an Sindarin is derived from Quenya.

Quenya was inspired by Finnish and Latin, but it is not related to either in the technical sense, as in the way English is related to German or French to Latin. There are no cognates. A priori means that the lexicon is not derived from a pre-existing lexicon (either by regular sound change, analogy, and grammaticalization, or by artificial alterations such as how Interlingua was derived from the Romance languages). — Gwalla | Talk 06:25, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A posteriori Elven Tongues[edit]

I do not support the statement that Tolkien's constucted languages are a priori. They obviously adopted at least some grammatical features of real languages, e.g. the affix system of Finnish.

I also think the sentence For example, J. R. R. Tolkien's Quenya and Sindarin, (...) are both a priori but not philosophical: they are meant to seem like natural languages, even though they have no relation to any natural languages is not entirely true. Tolkien's fiction is made so that Middle-earth is the ancient past of Europe, and Tolkien spread some puns in his invented languages so that some real-world words would be derived from his invented languages. More of this has been discussed in the TolkLang mailing list. Albmont 19:03, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

First impression - inconsistent[edit]

Dear authors. The present form of the article appears to be somewhat inconsistent in its teachings. For example, the opening statement very strongly appears to set "philosophical language" synonymous to "ideal language" and "a priori language", while not much further down, in the fourth paragraph, it is written that "Philosphical languages are almost all a priori languages ...".

Is the term "philosophical language" synonymous to the other two, or is it not? The article should be revised. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.46.103.18 (talk) 23:26, 26 April 2007 (UTC).[reply]

There's another inconsistency problem:

"Philosophical language" is more or less synonymous with "taxonomic language".

...and then the latter part of the same paragraph talks about two non-taxonomic conlangs! Better to say "most 16th-17th century philosophical languages were taxonomic in structure", or something like that. --Jim Henry (talk) 18:12, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Merge?[edit]

Should we merge this into Engineered language? Students of conlangs generally classify philosophical languages as a subset of what at now called engineered languages. --Jim Henry (talk) 15:05, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Solresol[edit]

I wonder, shouldn't Solresol be included / mentioned on the page, since it strikes me as a rather well-known (via "Close encounters of the third kind") taxonomical language. Am I mistaken ? Summsumm2 (talk) 09:16, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]