7
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to construct a language that is not semantically ambiguous?
I would be extremely skeptical of any claims to having constructed such a language
To start with, (most?) words do not strictly define a set of referents, but some sort of fuzzy set, where examples ...
- 9,880
7
votes
How dissimilar must case endings be to each other?
If there was a language where the case endings were just -a, -e, -i, -o, and -u, would speakers find these too similar to each other?
Consider modern Russian, which has six cases: nominative, ...
- 69.6k
6
votes
Finite set of meaning blocks language
toki pona is a constructed language which is very close to what you're looking for, it has only 120 words and you cannot add any new ones, you can just combine the existing ones to get the meaning you ...
- 18.6k
6
votes
Accepted
Invented Language with Noncontradictory Grammar
I suppose what you mean by "non-contradictory grammar" falls under the category of so-called logical languages, which try to establish a strictly systematic and, well, logical grammar without ...
- 6,601
6
votes
Linguistically speaking, what is the standard phraseology that pilots and air traffic controllers use to communicate?
The general term for this kind of language is Controlled Language or Controlled Natural Language. Aviation English, the standard phraseology that pilots and air traffic controllers use, is one example ...
- 31.1k
5
votes
Does Lojban really have “unambiguous resolution of sounds into words”?
This was an important consideration in the design of Lojban, so while I haven't gone through the process of verifying it myself, I'm fairly confident that it is true for most of the language. (Since ...
- 18.7k
5
votes
What is the status of Modern Standard Arabic?
The way I understand it:
Classical Arabic is what was used in the Koran, and the writings of that era.
Modern Standard Arabic is what is used today in formal writing, on television and so on which ...
- 8,189
5
votes
Accepted
Finite set of meaning blocks language
I'll just drop a list of some philosophical languages dedicated to a strictly compositional system making use of such "primitive meaning blocks", there have been many such attempts (there was a hype ...
- 6,601
5
votes
Accepted
Is there any "fully" agglutinative language (con- or real)?
There are very many such languages. For example, Shona ha-ndi-za-ka-va-on-a means "I haven't ever seen them" (morpheme breaks included, in case you thought that might be a bare root). Greenlandic ...
- 83.4k
5
votes
How dissimilar must case endings be to each other?
You don't even have to have case endings at all. The overwhelming majority of Niger-Congo languages don't, neither do Salishan, Chinese or most Romance languages. Classical Arabic did just fine with ...
- 83.4k
5
votes
Was there an attempt to create artifical language that computers understand well when spoken by human?
Yes, there was, and the project went a quite a long way to implement it. It was named Robot Interaction Language (Roila) and their website https://www.roila.org is still up (10 years after the ...
- 31.1k
4
votes
How would the ocean affect language?
After a quick look to WALS, my initial impression is that the number of unusual features in world languages tends to increase with historical isolation. Geographical proximity and language contact may ...
- 456
4
votes
How dissimilar must case endings be to each other?
In my understanding, you are trying to set the limits for redundancy, regarding the case endings.
I think, the direct answer to this question depends on your conlang's articulatory stress patterns:
...
- 8,641
4
votes
Is it possible to construct a language that is not semantically ambiguous?
It is impossible to avoid ambiguity. First, let's define "ambiguity": the situation where a given linguistic form can refer to more than one state of affairs (or however you want to talk ...
- 83.4k
4
votes
Is there any constructed language that builds concepts from primitives?
Toki Pona is probably the closest example.
It claims to have a lexicon of somewhere in the region of 120-137 words. In principle words for more specific concepts can be constructed ad hoc or based on ...
- 9,880
3
votes
What is the status of Modern Standard Arabic?
According to Wikipedia, Modern Standard Arabic is different from Classical Arabic.
This is a big question and Wikipedia is a good place to start from. What if I told you this was a controversial ...
- 775
3
votes
Stringed music as a constructed language
There is an older conlang that can be "spoken" via music, Solresol (http://www.sidosi.org/faq). So, yes, people have used music to make conlangs. I'm unsure of how it would arise, but, then, there are ...
3
votes
Finite set of meaning blocks language
this may work as an example of such meaning blocks
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_primes
- 75
3
votes
Could an entire language be created using only smells?
It seems unlikely that you could use smell in a similar way to voice or signing. Natural languages tend to be transitory - or sounds and sights do not hang around in the air that long, allowing new ...
- 2,364
3
votes
Is there any constructed language that builds concepts from primitives?
I think the Ancient language from Heaven's Vault qualifies. It's based on a set of 40-50 symbols, most of which have an individual meaning, and combines them to form longer words.
For example, the ...
- 322
2
votes
Finite set of meaning blocks language
There are two related theories of lexical semantics that seem amenable to this kind of thinking.
One is feature semantics, where a word can be assigned a number of positive or negative features (by ...
- 4,495
2
votes
Invented Language with Noncontradictory Grammar
You probably heard of a so-called logical language. Due to a split in the community, there are at least two of them named Loglan and Lojban.
- 31.1k
2
votes
Stringed music as a constructed language
There are whistled languages, e.g., El Silbo whistled on Gomera. I see no problems in general, to extend that concept to languages created by some musical instruments.
Perception is of course a ...
- 31.1k
2
votes
Stringed music as a constructed language
I don't see why not, but as for interspecies communication, the string-music language makes the assumption that the auditory perception of the different species is similar enough that the sounds can ...
- 2,711
2
votes
Accepted
Is "lolcat speak" a constructed language?
There probably can't be a definitive answer to this (somewhat similarly to the false dichotomy of languages v. dialects) because of the way in which lolcat speak arose and is used. Lolcat speak was ...
- 1,085
2
votes
Does Lojban really have “unambiguous resolution of sounds into words”?
There is a potential area of ambiguity in Lojban phonetics with regard to something called a "buffer vowel".
A "buffer vowel" is an optional epenthetic vowel used to break up consonant clusters. It ...
- 6,909
2
votes
Accepted
Standardized and ambiguity-free language
Here's what you were perhaps looking for:
Lojban (ложбан) is a conlang which is a syntactically unambiguous human language with logical and unambiguous structure and greater means of expression aimed ...
- 18.6k
2
votes
Does the Klingon spoken in Star Trek: Discovery present a harsh/ventricular/pressed voice phonation?
This is properly the domain of https://conlang.stackexchange.com , but at least one actor in Discovery (the one who played T'Kuvma) made a point of saying that he wanted his Klingon to sound African (...
- 3,386
2
votes
Could an entire language be created using only smells?
Obviously this is extremely speculative, given the premise, but yes
At a trivial level, with 26 distinct smells, you can implement English over scent by having one scent for each letter of the English ...
- 9,880
2
votes
Accepted
What language does the phonetic inventory of ERA's "Ameno" most resemble?
OK, there are phoneme inventories that can be downloaded as a whole or searched. Full absence of velar consonants is a rare feature of natural languages.
Doing a search on UPSID for languages without ...
- 31.1k
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