rickharrison.com → Artificial Language Lab

a system of classifying constructed languages

created by Richard K. Harrison, 1 July 1996
revised 1 March 1998, 18 June 2002
this page is in the public domain
 

People who collect information about planned languages sometimes need a quick way to describe them. I designed this system for use when the usual terms (such as a priori, philosophical, etc) are too long-winded or not specific enough.

This system classifies a language strictly on the basis of one criterion: the source of the majority of words in the vocabulary. Granted, there is a lot more to a language design than that one factor, but it seemed like a reasonable hook on which to hang a system of classification.

  • 1. a posteriori
    • 1.1 modified or revived single natural languages
      • 1.1.1 Latin
      • 1.1.2 Modern English
      • 1.1.9 others
    • 1.2 modifications of single a posteriori artificial languages
      • 1.2.1 Esperanto reform projects
      • 1.2.9 others
    • 1.3 combinations of closely-related artificial languages
    • 1.4 blends of closely-related natural languages
      • 1.4.1 pan-(Indo-)European vocabularies
        • 1.4.1.1 Romance vocabularies
        • 1.4.1.2 Germanic vocabularies
        • 1.4.1.3 Romance-Germanic mixtures
        • 1.4.1.4 Slavic vocabularies
        • 1.4.1.9 other
      • 1.4.2 Uralic vocabularies
      • 1.4.3 Sino-Tibetan vocabularies
      • 1.4.4 Afro-Asiatic (Hamitic-Semitic) vocabularies
      • 1.4.5 Niger-Kordofanian and Nilo-Saharan vocabularies
      • 1.4.9 other
    • 1.5 combinations of heterogenous natural languages
      • 1.5.1 words essentially unaltered
      • 1.5.2 words filtered or modified by phonotactic/morphological rules
  • 2. a priori and mixed type
    • 2.1 speakable languages
      • 2.1.1 philosophical languages (categorical vocabularies)*
      • 2.1.2 a priori but non-categorical vocabularies
      • 2.1.3 mixed type (a priori-a posteriori) vocabularies
    • 2.2 unspeakable projects
      • 2.2.1 pasigraphies (symbol/icon languages)
      • 2.2.2 number languages
      • 2.2.3 pasimologies (gesture languages)
      • 2.2.9 others

*Read a description of Ro to see what is meant by "categorical vocabularies."

Here are examples of how the system categorizes some well-known constructed languages:

1.1.1 Latino sine Flexion [Peano]
1.1.2 Basic English [Ogden]
1.2.1 Ido
1.3 INTAL [Weferling]
1.4.1 Esperanto [Zamenhof]
1.4.1.1 Interlingua [Gode]
1.5.2 Vorlin [Harrison]
2.1.1 Ro [Foster]
2.1.2 Suma [Russell]
2.2.1 Blissymbols