Engineered languages (often abbreviated to engelangs, or, less commonly, engilangs) are

constructed languages A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. ...

devised to test or prove some hypotheses about how languages work or might work. There are at least three subcategories,

philosophical languages A philosophical language is any constructed language that is constructed from first principles. It is considered a type of engineered language. Philosophical languages were popular in Early Modern times, partly motivated by the goal of revising n ...

(or ideal languages), logical languages (sometimes abbreviated as ''loglangs''), and

experimental language An experimental language is a constructed language designed for linguistics research, often on the relationship between language and thought. One particular assumption having received much attention in fiction is popularly known as the Sapir– ...

s. Raymond Brown describes engineered languages as "languages that are designed to specified ''objective'' criteria, and modeled to meet those criteria". Some engineered languages have been considered candidate global auxiliary languages, and some languages intended as international auxiliary languages have certain "engineered" aspects (in which they are more regular and systematic than their natural language sources).

Logical languages

Logical languages are meant to allow (or enforce) unambiguous statements. They are typically based on

predicate logic First-order logic—also known as predicate logic, quantificational logic, and first-order predicate calculus—is a collection of formal systems used in mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. First-order logic uses quant ...

but can also be based on any system of formal

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premi ...

. The two best-known logical languages are the predicate languages Loglan and its successor Lojban. They both aim to eliminate

syntactical ambiguity Syntactic ambiguity, also called structural ambiguity, amphiboly or amphibology, is a situation where a sentence may be interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous sentence structure. Syntactic ambiguity arises not from the range of mean ...

and reduce semantic ambiguity to a minimum. In particular, the grammar of Lojban is carefully engineered to express such predicate logic in an unambiguous manner.

Philosophical languages

Philosophical languages are designed to reflect some aspect of philosophy, particularly with respect to the nature or potential of any given language.

John Wilkins John Wilkins, (14 February 1614 – 19 November 1672) was an Anglican clergyman, natural philosopher, and author, and was one of the founders of the Royal Society. He was Bishop of Chester from 1668 until his death. Wilkins is one of the ...

' Real Character and Edward Powell Foster's Ro constructed their words using a taxonomic tree. Vocabularies of oligosynthetic languages, for example Ygyde, are made of

compound word In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word or sign) that consists of more than one stem. Compounding, composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. Compounding occurs when t ...

s, which are coined from a small (theoretically minimal) set of

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone ...

s. Sonja Lang's Toki Pona is based on minimalistic

simplicity Simplicity is the state or quality of being simple. Something easy to understand or explain seems simple, in contrast to something complicated. Alternatively, as Herbert A. Simon suggests, something is simple or complex depending on the way we c ...

Experimental languages

An experimental language is a

constructed language A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. ...

designed for the purpose of exploring some element in the theory of

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...

. Most such languages are concerned with the relation between language and thought; however, languages have been constructed to explore other aspects of language as well. In

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel univ ...

, much work has been done on the assumption popularly known as the

Sapir–Whorf hypothesis The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis , the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language affects its speakers' worldview or cognition, and thus people ...

Suzette Haden Elgin Suzette Haden Elgin (born Patricia Anne Suzette Wilkins; November 18, 1936 – January 27, 2015) was an American researcher in experimental linguistics, construction and evolution of languages and poetry and science fiction writer. She founded t ...

's Láadan is designed to lexicalize and grammaticalize the concepts and distinctions important to women, based on muted group theory.

Examples

References

External links