A Survey of Relative Pronouns and their Uses in Natural and Artificial Languages

Libert, Alan,Moskovsky, Christo Institute for University Language Sejong Instituti 2003 Journal of Universal Language Vol.4 No.2

This paper discusses a variety of questions regarding the form and function of relative pronouns in artificial languages. In the first major park of the information about relative pronouns in natural languages is presented. From this part the prospective language designer will get an idea of the range of relevant possibilities occurring in natural languages. The second major park shows some of the choices which languages designers have made with respect to relative pronouns in their languages. Generally these choices have been within a narrow range, that is, not all of the possibilities of natural languages have been selected for artificial languages. Specifically, the morphology and syntax of relative pronouns quite often resembles that of Indo-European languages, which is not surprising, since most language designers have been native speakers of an Indo-European language, and many artificial languages have been based on one or more of these languages. The final section of the paper contains some recommendations for the design and use of relative pronouns in artificial languages.

On the Form and Function of Reflexives in Artificial Languages

Libert, Alan,Moskovsky, Christo Institute for University Language Sejong Instituti 2002 Journal of Universal Language Vol.3 No.1

This paper explores issues in relation to the form and function of reflexive pronouns which a language designer should take into consideration in the construction of an artificial language grammar. The first main part of the paper deals with the rather complex and versatile nature of reflexive pronouns in natural languages, discussing reflexives in terms of syntactic and discourse function, morphemic structure, lexical specification for phi-features, subject-orientation, etc. Typological and functional aspects of reflexive pronouns in a number of existing artificial languages are considered in the next part of the paper. The final part addresses the question of what would be the optimal reflexive pronoun from the perspective of artificial language construction. It is proposed that any component of an artificial language grammar, including the reflexive pronoun, would inevitably be a compromise between simplicity of form and function on the one hand, and clarity on the other. It is also suggested that, as artificial languages are by their very nature non-primary languages, designers of artificial languages should take into account essential properties of second language acquisition and use.

A Survey of Relative Pronouns and their Uses in Natural and Artificial Languages

Alan Libert,Christo Moskovsky 세종대학교 언어연구소 2003 Journal of Universal Language Vol.4 No.2

On the Form and Function of Reflexives in Artificial Languages

Alan Libert,Christo Moskovsky 세종대학교 언어연구소 2002 Journal of Universal Language Vol.3 No.1

The Representation of Uralic Languages in Artificial International Auxiliary Languages

Alan Libert 세종대학교 언어연구소 2013 Journal of Universal Language Vol.14 No.1

Artificial international auxiliary languages, particularly the major ones such as Esperanto and Interlingua, have taken relatively few words or grammatical features from Uralic languages (or from other non-Indo-European languages). In this paper I will examine some auxiliary languages which have used one or more Uralic languages as sources. Among these languages are Angos, Ardano, Budinos, Eura, Kweda, Lingwa de Planeta, Neo Patwa, Uusisuom/Lapsi, and Veltparl. In general Uralic items make up only a small part of the language as a whole.

The Representation of Korean and Other Altaic Languages in Artificial International Auxiliary Languages

Alan Reed Libert 세종대학교 언어연구소 2012 Journal of Universal Language Vol.13 No.1

Korean and other Altaic languages are generally not well represented in artificial international auxiliary languages: the best known such languages (such as Esperanto and Ido) have borrowed almost nothing from them, instead almost exclusively using Indo-European languages as sources. In this paper I will present some auxiliary languages which have taken words and/or parts of their grammar from Altaic languages, looking at which items have been borrowed and in some cases what percentage of the vocabulary they account for. The languages discussed (most of which were created relatively recently) include Ardano, Dousha, Dunia, Konya, Kosmo, Kumiko, Lingwa de Planeta, Neo Patwa, NOXILO, Olingo, Pan-kel, Sambahsa-mundialect, Sona, and Unish. In the cases of most of these languages only a small proportion of the total vocabulary comes from Altaic languages. Further, some of the words said to have been taken from an Altaic language originally came from an Indo-European language. In addition, I will compare the proportion of Korean items to those taken from the other languages of the Altaic family. Overall Korean has been drawn upon less than Japanese, but (not surprisingly) more than Mongolian, Azerbaijani, and Uzbek. Most conclusions are tentative because the vocabularies of most of the auxiliary languages examined have not been fully developed and because often information about sources of words is not given.

The Representation of Uralic Languages in Artificial International Auxiliary Languages

Alan Reed Libert 세종대학교 언어연구소 2013 Journal of Universal Language Vol.14 No.1

A Survey of Interjections in International Auxiliary Languages

Alan Reed Libert 세종대학교 언어연구소 2014 Journal of Universal Language Vol.15 No.1

In this paper, I examine various aspects of interjections in international auxiliary languages. Many authors of works on such languages give little or no attention to interjections, apparently thinking that it is not necessary or important to say much about them. The main matter to be discussed is how interjections were created; in some cases they were derived by means of a suffix from words of other classes, in others, zero-derived from other words. In some languages, they are marked in a particular way,distinguishing them from words of other parts of speech. Most works on international auxiliary languages provide very little, if any, information on how interjections are to be used; we will see some instructions which have been given. I will also bring upsome of the ideas that language designers have about interjections.

Terms for Bodies of Water in A Posteriori and Mixed Artificial Languages

Alan Reed Libert,Christo Moskovsky 세종대학교 언어연구소 2015 Journal of Universal Language Vol.16 No.2

In this paper we look at words for bodies of water (e.g., words for ‘lake’ and ‘river’) in a large number of a posteriori and mixed artificial languages. After presenting the data and briefly discussing some of them, we analyze some aspects of them, including which meanings seem to be more basic than others. For example, words meaning ‘river’ appear to be unmarked with respect to words meaning similar, but smaller, bodies of water (e.g., ‘brook’), since some artificial languages derive the latter from the former, but no languages in our sample derive the latter from the former. This sort of analysis can be applied to other semantic fields in artificial languages.

Possibilities for Passives in Natural and Artificial Languages

Moskovsky, Christo,Libert, Alan Institute for University Language Sejong Instituti 2004 Journal of Universal Language Vol.5 No.2

The Passive Voice is a category which we find in the large majority of natural languages, and also in most artificial languages. The first major part of this paper offers a survey of passive constructions in a number of typologically distinct natural languages, with the basic aim of presenting the (prospective) artificial language constructor with the range of functional and formal properties of the Passive Voice which occur in natural languages. This survey shows that regardless of the fair amount of variation in the morphosyntactic form of passives that we find in different natural languages, crosslinguistically passives are remarkably uniform in inevitably occurring as a grammatical category marked (synthetically or analytically) on the verb; they are also remarkably uniform in relation to the basic function they perform: passivization inevitably involves demotion of a primary clausal term (the Subject) and in most of the cases also promotion of a non-primary term. The next part of the paper offers an overview of Passive Voice formation and function in artificial languages, which will provide the language constructor with a good idea of some of the `design' decisions taken with regard to this grammatical category. Finally, the paper briefly discusses various design issues in relation to economy, explicitness/ambiguity, functionality, and learnability and presents some specific recommendations with regard to the possible design of passives in an artificial language.