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What is Toaq? (for linguists): Difference between revisions
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In the process, 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 that of natural languages; its lack of ambiguity should, ideally, seem to be a perfect coincidence. | In the process, 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 that of natural languages; its lack of ambiguity should, ideally, seem to be a perfect coincidence. | ||
== A very brief history of loglangs == | |||
Interest in a "mathematically planned human language" runs centuries into the past. Consider Leibniz's ''characteristica universalis'', which inspired Frege's ''Begriffschrift'', among others. 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, then speakers of a ''logical language'' would think more logically. Its successor, [[Lojban]], furthered the 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. | Interest in a "mathematically planned human language" runs centuries into the past. Consider Leibniz's ''characteristica universalis'', which inspired Frege's ''Begriffschrift'', among others. 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, then speakers of a ''logical language'' would think more logically. Its successor, [[Lojban]], furthered the 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, thus, proceeds more for its own sake than that of its predecessors. | 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, thus, proceeds more for its own sake than that of its predecessors. | ||
Within the conlang community, people [https://toaqlanguage.wordpress.com/2022/09/26/logical-language-misconceptions/ seem to disagree] on what a "logical language" is: for some, merely being based in spirit on predicate logic is enough. By demanding of itself a syntax that's fully defined, unambiguous, and yet shaped like that of a natural language, Toaq has set the bar high. Can it be cleared at all? | |||
== Writing a parser == | == Writing a parser == | ||