16th October 2010 | Draft
Re-Emergence of the Language of the Birds through Twitter?
Harmonising the configuration of pattern-breaking interjections and expletives
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Philosophical languages: a particular form of artificial language of potential relevance is philosophical language, namely those constructed from first principles, like a logical language, possibly with a strong claim to absolute perfection or transcendent truth rather than satisfaction of pragmatic goals. Especially suggestive are the vocabularies of oligosynthetic languages composed of compound words coined from a small (theoretically minimal) set of morphemes.
* The minimal (oligoisolating language) Toki Pona, designed by Sonja Elen Kisa, focuses on simple concepts and elements that are relatively universal among cultures in order to express maximal meaning with minimal complexity. The language, inspired by Taoist philosophy, has 14 phonemes and a vocabulary of some 120 root words. The root vocabulary is designed around the principles of living a simple life without the complications of modern civilization.
* Of related interest is Zaum, the linguistic experiments in sound symbolism and artistic language creation of Russian Futurist poets such as Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchenykh. Some of Khlebnikov's work has been explicitly related to the Language of the Birds. (Jennifer Wilson, Transrational Language: a revolution in semiotics -- Khlebnikov and Kruchenykh's experiments with cubo-futurism, The Birch, Fall 2005). Zaum has been linked to the Oulipo initiative -- whose creative "absurdity" is of current relevance to governance (Lipoproblems: developing a strategy omitting a key problem, 2009).
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