After the inception of the PreBabel site on July 14, 2009, it has caught many people's interest. An in-depth discussion on the PreBabel took place at "conlanger bulletin board." Many great questions and critiques were discussed there. The following is a brief summary of those discussions.
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Day eleven --
Answer -- I find your previous post on this issue, as below.
Quote from "Trailsend" --
I would suggest that a "universal language" as you have conceived it is indeed impossible, save that it becomes a redundant middle-man tongue that complicates cross-language understanding more than anything.
In that way, PB is, as others have said, somewhat redundant. It is just another language which must be "learned" like any other, and therefore would not serve the purpose of a universal language. For example, learning PB would not enable me to quickly learn Hindi, because Hindi will conceptualize ideas in a much different way than PB does, and I would essentially be starting over.
I also agree with the concerns others have mentioned about your proposed root system. It seems very redundant in places and very limited in scope. Granted, you have admitted that your root system may not be perfect, and you seem to be more interested in the theoretical notion of some small root set which could be used to derive all other concepts. (As mentioned above, I think this notion is flawed--even if you found a single root set which could represent all the concepts of one language, those representations will not necessarily be intelligible by speakers of different languages with different mindsets.) But for the sake of science, here's a test for the current root system.
--End quote.
In a previous post, I did discuss an issue about the isomorphism between languages, which was brought up by you. And, you kind of agreed that if all languages are isomorphic to one another, then a true universal language becomes possible.
After the introduction of the "Private Language Thesis (PLT)" and the "Invention Theorem", the isomorphic issue can be dealt a lot more precise than before. The whole issue is really about "what is a language?" I discussed this issue at two places.
Day twelve --
Answer -- I think that there is no disagreement of any kind among linguists on the issue of whether any computer language is a genuine language. Yet, I did not find any "verb" class in any computer language, although there are some kind of action-like key words, such as, goto, print, etc..
Those action-like key words (goto, print, etc.) are not verbs. Computer language is written in "lines". They are executed (by CPU) line by line. Although we can use computer as a communication tool, the computer language itself is not a "communicative" language but an executive language, very much similar to the PWNL (Primordial what not language) which I discussed in my last post.
In fact, verb is a sub-class of the "parts of speech" class which is a unique feature only for an inflected language. Any language which is not inflected does not have "parts of speech" although it does have action-like, adjective-like, adverb-like, ..., many other-like words. In my paper "PreBabel -- The true Universal Language", I did discuss the issue of conceptual and perceptual languages (also available in the book "The Divine Constitution", Library of Congress Catalog Card number 91-90780). Many of the perceptual languages are inflected. Yet, most of the conceptual languages are not inflected. In a conceptual language, all words are in a conceptual level, no time-mark (or any other mark for that matter, such as adjective or adverb, etc.) is attached to any word. Then, a word can be used as anything, as a noun, a verb, an adjective, ..., etc..
For the conceptual language, even the "subject - predicate" structure is not needed. As there are some conceptual languages out there, many linguists do recognize this fact. Without a subject-predicate structure, there is no need for a verb class. Chinese language is an 100% conceptual language and its words are not inflected. What kind of grammar can govern this type of language? A great paper on this is available at
Day thirteen --
Answer -- I think that 2 or 3 examples will suffice to show the process of encoding and to evaluate that whether the PB root word set is capable of encoding all English words or not.
The first step is to define the word with two or more (maximally 4) English words of your choice.
For "laser" = (engineer, light), Note: (this is my choice, and you can have yours.)
The second step is to read out these words with PB roots or PB words.
"Engineer" = root 125
"light" = (fire, energy), as this word "light" is not a current PB word, it must be encoded first.
"fire" = root 91
"energy" = root 3
So, "laser" = (R125, R91, R3)
For "electricity" = (lightning, energy)
As "lightning" is not a current PB word, it must be encoded first.
"lightning" = (rain, light)
Again, "rain" is not a current PB word, it also must be encoded first.
"rain" = (sky, water)
"sky" = seed word (sw) 97
"water" = root 93
So, "electricity" = (sw97, r93, r91, r3, r3)
For a large PB word, it can actually written as a PB word phrase, such as,
"electricity" = (lightning, energy) = ((sw97, r93, r91, r3), r3)
For "radio" = (artificial, speak)
"artificial" = (man, engineer) = (r96, r125)
"speak" = r165
So, "radio" = (r96, r125, r165)
For "buttmunch" = (kiss, butt) and many of you can encode this one better than I could.
For "what's up" or "never trust a pineapple", the meaning of these phrases or sentences is the result of semantic operation. When PreBabel has enough PB words, some combinations of those words can easily translate those sentences. In fact, we don't encode sentences but translate them.
Answer -- With the above examples, we can be very confident that an induction proof that this PB root word set can, indeed, encode the entire English vocabulary. Yet, why should anyone want to learn it?
Almost all the non-English speaking countries teach English in their schools, and most of their students learned English one to five years during their school years. Yet, 80% of them are unable truly to speak or to write in English. English is simply a too difficult language to learn as a second language.
With the PreBabel, a new linguistic law was discovered.
Law 1: Encoding with a closed set of root words, any arbitrary vocabulary type language will be organized into a logically linked linear chain.
When the encoding of English with PB set is completed (100% or at least with a dictionary of 50,000 English words), this PreBabel (English) becomes a dialect of English. Then learning English as a second language via its dialect [PreBabel (English)] will become much, much easier (10 to 100 times easier). And, this is a testable issue.
As we already know that Chinese written language was one of the most difficult language to learn in the world, yet it becomes the easiest one after the Chinese word system was encoded 100% with a cousin of the PB set. A world record was set with only 89 days of study (from an initial state of not knowing a single Chinese word both verbal and written to a level of being able to read the current Chinese newspaper), and this case can be examined in detail at
Answer -- Before a natural language is encoded with the PB set 100%, the encoding process is an open frame process. Indeed, a thing or a concept can be encoded in many different ways with the PB set, such as,
[R(a), R(b, R(c)] = [R(x), R(y)] = ...
And, these are synonyms. Of course, at the time of compiling a dictionary for that language, some synonyms should be dropped while only preserve the best ones.
Although the encoding process is wide open, limited only by our imagination, there is one rule that we should observe, the excluding principle.
Excluding Principle: when R(a) + R(b) means X, then R(b) + R(a) should mean X+ (not X). When a word already has a PB code, a similar code should be assigned to a different word if that PB code can encompass it.
This excluding principle is not in contradiction with the synonyms but is a good and economic way of encoding. In a sense, this kind of assignment is kind of going back to the issue of "you told me so," but the degree of that has reduced greatly.
Day fourteen --
Answer -- This is a very important point. Yet, it was posted so early in this thread, and I was unable to answer it without laying out my position first. Now, I can answer it with an "Attractor theorem".
"Attractor theorem" -- if set R is an attractor (unifying set or a converging set) of some arbitrary set A, B, C,...; set R is also the attractor of all its (set R) descendant sets, set S, T, U, ...
In the case of our discussion, the Set R is the PreBabel set, and A, B, C ... are all natural languages. Set S, T, U,... are all dialects of the PreBabel, derived from a diverging force which is described in your post. Yet, the PB set will also be the converging point of all those dialects.
There are many examples in nature following this Attractor Theorem. For example, ocean is the attractor for all water. Hurricane is a diverging force for ocean, which sucks up billions tons of water away from ocean each time, and it moves those water to a very far away mountain. Yet, most of the water will eventually go back to the ocean. In short, if R is an attractor for a system L, there is no diverging force in L which can create a diverged set in L not converging to R.
Of course, if the PreBabel is not an attractor in L, then the Attractor Theorem does not apply. If the PreBabel is an attractor in L, then your question is answered.
Some of you are not happy about the way that I encoded some words, such as, laser. Of course, anyone can always do a better job. Yet, the key point is that whether the "Regression Encoding Procedure (REP)" works or not, regardless of whether a particular word was encoded good or poorly.
Before an actual PB set on hand, whether a system L (all natural languages) has an attractor (universal language) or not can only be discussed on a theoretical level, by proving many mathematic theorems, such as,
Answer -- The using of dishwasher is, indeed, increasing the dishwashing steps, from a two step job (washing, put it away) to five steps (rinsing, loading, close door, turn power on, unloading). Yet, no one will disagree that dishwasher is an easier way of doing the dishwashing. Of course, with the PreBabel, we are learning two instead of one. The point is that which one uses less energy, the memory energy. This again is a testable issue. We should design one or many tests for this.
I did discuss the "Minimum complexity theorem". Before the minimum complexity is reached for a system, there is always a way to reduce its complexity by using a device which re-organizes the system, such as the dishwasher. Unless all current natural languages are all at their minimum complexity state, we can always introduce a device to reduce their complexity. In the extreme case, that they all are, indeed, at their minimum complexity state themselves, the total system (encompass all natural languages) is still at a random state, as none of the language (excluding the dialects or a family language) is linked in any fashion. That is, the complexity of this total system can be reduced although all its members are all at the minimum state themselves. Thus, the concept of the PreBabel could still be helpful even under this circumstance. Whether that the current PB set is the best candidate for this job or not is not truly an issue.
Day fifteen --
Answer -- Indeed, there are much, much more in a language than just "word form" of its vocabulary.
The Empire State building has 102 floors with two sets of elevators, A and B. Elevator A takes the tourists to the 82nd floor from the lobby. The elevator B goes the rest of way, all the way to the top, 102nd floor.
It is not right to condemn the elevator A being useless of not doing the job all the way. I have never claimed that the word root set alone is the whole thing for a language. For Chinese language, the "lesson two" of the book "Chinese Etymology" does discuss the verbal (pronunciations) of Chinese phonetics. As the book is a commercial product, only a brief introduction of that lesson is available online, at:
Answer -- There is a significant difference between the PB approach and any other languages. Excluding the traditional Chinese word system (as the PB set was derived from it), the "word token" itself of most natural languages carries no "meaning," while its meaning is assigned and agreed in and by its language community. That is, those words have no syntactic meaning but have a semantic meaning. On the contrary, the PB word (Chinese traditional word is now a dialect of PB word) does carry an innate meaning, a direct read out from its composite root members. I can describe this difference as below.
Answer -- Seemingly, many of you are still viewing the PreBabel as a conlang, similar to Esperanto which is a "stand alone" conlang. Even if the Esperanto is a universal language, it is not an attractor for all other natural languages.
The PreBabel is not a stand alone conlang but an attractor of all natural languages. The difference between the two is so great, and there is no example which can be used to describe it, such as, the gap between Heaven and Earth, etc..
We use the PB set to encode all languages, not to replace them. For English, there is a PreBabel (English) or PB (English) in short, and the PB (English) is a dialect of English. For Russian, there is dialect of PB (Russian), etc..
For a Russian, learning PB (Russian), (when its encoding is complete), will be very easy. Then, this Russian can learn English via PB (English), (when its encoding is complete), and it will be much easier than by learning natural English directly. This is a testable issue as soon as both languages are encoded by a PB set, doesn't have to be the current PB set.
In fact, it is a testable issue that learning Russian via PB (Russian), (when there is one there), can be much easier than learning natural Russian directly even by a native Russian person.
For Chinese written language, the above test was done many times with success, as there is already a PB (Chinese written language). In all senses, the PB (Chinese) could be the worst PB (languages), as it was encoded by the ancient Chinese with the current PB set. And their encoding logic is very ancient and very heavily culturally laden. The students of Chinese etymology do have some problems for the ancient inferring logic; yet, it is quickly overcome when they place themselves in the ancient time. With this process, they also learned many Chinese culture.
Day sixteen --
Answer -- After a three hundred year British Empire and one hundred year of American hegemony (a total of over 400 years), the English should be a true universal language long ago. Today, a very high percentage of non-English speaking people in the world learned one to five years English in their school years; yet, the majority of those people cannot claim that English is their second language with any kind of proficiency.
Ave94 said, "It isn't just that English is difficult, it's that they had no reason to maintain fluency. Most people only need one language in their lives, so why keep practicing their 2nd language? Only us language geeks will learn languages without real use for them."
Although this is very true, it still cannot hide the fact that English is just a too difficult language to learn. Even for Americans with the English as the first language, 20% of them are factually illiterate and a lot more are semi-illiterate. With the English as it is, even with another 500 years of America hegemony, it will definitely still not be able to make the current situation any better. Fortunately, with the PreBabel, this situation can be changed.
In the web page "PreBabel Laws and Theorems" ( http://www.prebabel.info/bab010.htm ), The Theorem 1 states,
Theorem 1: With law 1 and law 2, any arbitrary vocabulary type of language will become an easy language to learn (as mother tongue or as a second language) by encoding itself with a closed root word set to create a mnemonic chain.
Note:
Law 1: Encoding with a closed set of root words, any arbitrary vocabulary type language will be organized into a logically linked linear chain, similar to the amino acids / enzymes / proteins system.
Law 2: When every natural language is encoded with a universal set of root words, a true Universal Language emerges.
The PB(English) is that the natural English is encoded with the PreBabel root word set. And, PB(Russian), PB(Arabic) or PB(Chinese) can also be constructed in the same manner. The PB(English) is a dialect of the natural English. With the Theorem 1, PB(English) will be a very easy language to learn as a mother tongue or as a second language. That is, by using PB(English), the illiterate rate in "America" will be reduced. Of course, this is a "testable" issue as soon as the construction of the PB(English) is completed. Yet, some theoretical points can be discussed here.
Answer -- By 2020, China will complete her task of going back to the traditional system. The PreBabel (Chinese) will have 1.5 billion speakers by then.
Day seventeen
For a premise, it must be testable. Non-testable premise belongs to the fiction. There is no point of analyzing word by word or sentence by sentence of any premise or any theory. If it is not testable, it will not get any attention. Thus, any premise must face the following three steps,
Day nineteen