Ithkuil
- Constructed language plan language
-
Art ( other constructed languages)
Ithkuil or Iţkuîl [ ɪθkʊil ] is a constructed language that was developed 1978-2004 by the American John Quijada. The author develops his own words as philosophical a priori language, which is based heavily on logical principles. Quijada's goal was to develop a language which encodes a maximum of linguistic information as compact as possible and thus demonstrates what human language everything is at least theoretically possible.
The preliminary result is a language that is extremely complicated in their grammatical structure, so that the effort to learn it, in comparison to other ( natural and constructed ) languages , would be enormous. This was the part Quijada but never provided. He packed in this language all possible concepts that are known from grammars of other languages , as well as self-invented concepts, all of which he explained in detail and understandable. Here also his wit is not too short - a striking example, his fondness for clowns as an actor in set examples.
Phonology
Ithkuil has - to allow the shortest possible words - an extremely large phoneme inventory. There is a total of 65 consonants ( including aspirated consonants, ejectives and the glottal stop ) and 17 vowels. Some consonants can be pronounced syllabic. Vowels are always pure ' pronounced and can be diphthongised. In addition, a number of allophones is described. Phonological processes that are occurring in Ithkuil: gemination, word accent change and five clay molds. In addition, Quijada has worked very detailed phonotactic as euphonic rules for the language.
Morphology
In Ithkuil there are only two types of words: Formative and adjuncts. Formative roughly correspond to nouns and verbs. These are formed from a root word, which consists of a root that in turn from two consonant components ( " radicals" ) exists. For each component, there are 60 different shapes, thus resulting in a theoretical maximum number of 3600 roots. The tribe is now formed by adding a vocalic infix. Which of the 36 possible infixes is chosen depends on which morphological concepts you want to assign to the trunk. In addition there are a number of so-called " mutation rules" that produced from a morphologically determinate form a variety of phonological variations for all sounds.
Adjunct take over the function of pronouns, articles, prepositions, conjunctions and, but also of auxiliary or modal verbs. The Adjunct morphology differs from type to type, and is nearly as extensive as the morphology of the Formative.
Other notable features of morphology, for example, that the valence of a verb is displayed directly, while 14 forms are distinguished. In addition Ithkuil knows 81 case, and accomplished by the finest meaning distinctions.
Syntax
The syntax is kept surprisingly scarce in comparison to other areas of the language. This can be explained by the fact that all the semantic and pragmatic information can be given by the great variety of morphological concepts. Thus, the word order in Ithkuil can also be chosen very freely. However, there are two basic positions, which are generally applicable. One applies for main, the other for subordinate clauses. Roughly speaking, applies to former SOV ( subject - object - verb), for second consists VOS. The only restrictions put on the word order, those cases in which a direct attributive relationship between two or more constituents to be expressed are.
Font
The font in which Ithkuil to be written, ie Içtaîl [ ɪçtail ]. It is a " morpho - phonemic writing", which means that the characters used partially contain direct information about the phonetic value, as well as information about the morphological use. Those parts of a word whose pronunciation is predictable, are not written, while, at the same time carry those parts that refer to the phonetic value of the unpredictable part of grammatical information that is necessary to reconstruct the unwritten parts. Thus also results in Scripture an extremely dense amount of information. Assuming all possible combinations of sub- symbols, results in a total of 3606 characters.
The characters are arranged linearly, but is not written in a uniform direction, but "vertical furrows agile " (see Bustrophedon ). The characters are not mirrored, but rotated 180 degrees, as it illustrates the example on the right.
Example sentence
On the right is an example sentence which is written in Içtaîl.
Ithkuil official transcription: Pull uíqišx ma'wałg eřyaufënien ˉ päţwïç auxë'yaļt xne'wïļta'şui tua kit Oella yaqazmuiv li'yïrzişka ' p'amḿ aìlo'wëčča šu'yehtaş
Transcription in IPA: [ pʊl ː ʊɪqɪʃx maʔwaʟɡ ɛʁjɑʊfɤnɪɛn ˉ pæθwɯç aʊxɤʔjaɬt xnɛʔwiɬtaʔʂʊɪ tʊa kɪt œl ː a ː jaqazmʊɪv lɪʔjɯɾzɪʂkaʔ p'am aɪlɔwɤtʃ ː a ʃʊʔjɛhtaʂ ]
Listen? / I
German Translation: As well as our vehicle leaves the ground, and falls over the edge of the cliff in the direction of the valley floor, I ponder about whether it is possible that accused me someone a morally reprehensible act, after I had failed, along a reasonable price maintain the roadway.
Lexicon
After a number of different words can be derived by the elaborate morphology of a lexeme, the Lexicon of corresponding small scale. In principle, the morphonology Ithkuils would allow through the 3600 possible roots with their trunks over 100,000 lexemes, however effective it needs much less to express all possible concepts. Currently (April 4, 2008) described 643 roots from which 11574 strains were formed.
To take into account the strict order in the language Quijada has the lexicon divided into 17 semantic classes, which can be seen from the alphabetical order of the radicals. These classes are in a nutshell: numerical concepts, comparisons, Mathematics - intellectual / cognitive concepts - concepts for change, cause and effect - states of organic matter - concepts for communication, learning and language - physical states of matter in general - spatial concepts that form and movement - taxonomy organic life - taxonomy of physical substances - Concepts for relation, identity and relationship - spatial order / arrangement, configuration - socially or externally -induced feeling for art - personal feelings / preferences / affect / emotions - forms social will or personal relationships - concepts the existence / status / notes / Subjective awareness - personal characteristics will - temporal concepts
New version
2007 Quijada presented a new version of Ithkuil, which he calls Iláksh. He was encouraged after a group of Russian-speaking announcing interested people, they wanted to learn Ithkuil. The enthusiasm of this was triggered by an article in Russian computer magazine " Kompjuterra " in which, among other things, the possibility was discussed that one could by the extreme conciseness of language also think faster, you'd just bring it about, to learn this language. Since Quijada not had in the conception of Ithkuil the intention that this language is actually used for communication, but at the same time wanted to support this interest, he decided to construct Iláksh that as Ithkuil works in principle, but one phoneme inventory of only 38 consonants and 10 vowels has ( instead of 65 consonants and 17 vowels ). So it should at least be easier to pronounce the words.