What is Toaq? (for linguists): Difference between revisions

Toaq's primary goal is to be free of syntactic ambiguities like ''Everybody saw somebody'' or ''I saw the man with the telescope''. The syntax of Toaq is carefully designed so that every sentence has precisely one meaning. Thus, its syntax-to-semantics transformation can be implemented as a deterministic computer program. <!--(Among conlangers, such a language is called a [[loglang]] or ''logical language'', though the exact meaning of that term is debated.)-->

In this endeavor, Toaq tries to preserve a high degree of humanism. It would be simple to achieve our goal by assigning a phonology to a set of mathematical symbols, but such a language wouldn't look anything like human language, and would be difficult for humans to speak and process. Toaq's syntax is modeled after natural languages; the unambiguity should ideally seem to be a perfect coincidence.

Interest in a "mathematically planned human language" can be traced back centuries into the past: consider Leibniz's ''characteristica universalis'', which inspired Frege's ''Begriffschrift''. Concretely, Toaq's lineage can be traced back to [[Loglan]], developed by James Cooke Brown in the 1950s to investigate the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity Sapir–Whorf hypothesis]. The idea was roughly that, if language shapes thought, speakers of a ''logical language'' would think more logically. Its successor, [[Lojban]], furthered this effort, and its designers hoped that it would see use as a ''machine interlingua'': a syntactically unambiguous language that would put humans and computers on a level playing field for communication.

In the past half-century, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis has become largely disfavored, and advances in artificial intelligence show us that computers have no trouble engaging meaningfully with natural language, no matter its syntactic ambiguity. Toaq's development, then, is more for its own sake than that of its predecessors: We are constructing a curious linguistic object.

Can a language with Toaq's stated primary goal even exist? To prove that it can, we must write a complete [[parser]]; to do so, we must thoroughly develop the syntax and semantics of a language. In developing this parser, a contingent of Toaq speakers has taken an amateur interest in natural language semantics. A human-oriented language whose syntax is small and unambiguous turns out to be an attractive testbed for ''implementing'' semantics research. How many ideas from formal linguistics must we combine before our language can express anything we might want to say, and our software can correctly annotate it? Can humans learn to reliably produce correct sentences, when learning grammar means absorbing strict rules about scope and quantification?

Toaq's secondary purpose is to be aesthetically pleasing. Its speakers are excited about language and language creation. Its phonology and lexicon are designed from scratch. Engaging with Toaq can mean anything from contributing software, to inventing interesting words, to making beautiful calligraphy. We are as indebted to Montague as we are to Tolkien. In this way, Toaq is a sort of sociolinguistic art project.

The point is not to introduce Toaq as a new lingua franca, or to change how we think. Rather, we play in the space where language meets logic and nature meets artifice. We let semantic theories roam freely in a syntactic utopia. Ultimately, it's a playful and fantastical way to ask ourselves the same question all syntacticians do: How do we speak what we mean, and what do we mean when we speak?

Learning a language is a large effort, but you don't have to commit to enjoy participating. If any of this sounds meaningful, or just fascinating — we'd be delighted to see you on [[Discord]]. {{t|Laojaı íme pó súq nha!}} [[Image:Jemu.png|20px]]