Complexlang: a COMPact Logical EXperimental LANGuage Kelvin M. Liu-Huang Carnegie Mellon University
[email protected] Published in Proceedings of SIGBOVIK 2019 (15 March 2019) Informal revisions (27 March 2019, 29 April 2019) Abstract and learning barrier of natural languages, Natural languages trade compactness and mathematical expressions seem better in these ways. consistency for efficiency. Complexlang is an a priori, The tradeoff is, of course, that mathematical declarative, ideographic spoken/written language descriptions can be very elaborate or unwieldy. which attempts to construct/ground the semantic We attempt to address all these concerns by structure of both morphology and syntax from first constructing Complexlang. Language should ideally principles using tools provided by propositional logic, synchronize speech, writing, and comprehension in set theory, type theory, number theory, object- order to facilitate learning. Like aUI (Weilgart, 1979) oriented programming, metaphysics, linguistics, and and Arahau (Karasev, 2006), by infusing individual classical field theory. In doing so, we hypothesize letters with meaning and using phonemic that speakers may converse in Complexlang with little orthography, words have transparent and largely training and learn some math and science in the deterministic etymology; writing, speech, and process. meaning can all be inferred from each other, reducing ambiguity, speeding up learning, and even allowing efficient and deterministic creation of 1. Introduction neologisms. For simplicity, the orthography is simply Most previous constructed languages intended for the IPA symbols of the phonemes. Unlike aUI and human use set out to improve etymological integrity Arahau, Complexlang attempts to express semantics (Zamenhof, 1887), semantic clarity (Bliss, 1965; entirely through logic, specifically patterned after set Karasev, 2006; Weilgart, 1979; Quijada, 2004), theory, rather than metaphor, resulting in compact, consistency (Weilgart, 1979; Cowan, 1997; Quijada, transparent, and unambiguous expressions.