An Introduction To ClassyLang

Wittgenstein argued (in the Tractatus) that language is composed of complex proposition which can be reduced to a series of elementary propositions (atoms).
It is said by some that he naively believed that the world could be built from these "atoms" but it is obvious that Wittgenstein had no great faith in language and maintained that "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language."
It is also obvious that there are many things that language cannot describe but if we were able to create a form of Wittgenstein’s “atoms” which did not have many of the pitfalls of conventional languages then maybe it would be possible to combine them and construct “molecules” – a step along the path.
It is my belief that a language like ClassyLang could go a long way toward making “atomic” definitions much more precise.

I'm sometimes amazed by my own naivety!
Here am I offering ideas that will help remove the enchantment from language on a site where most believe that the enchantment is more important than the message :O)
Of course there is even less chance of those already very favourably entrenched in the 'system' to want something which might alter the status quo.

Stipped of its power-words, emotive rhetoric, euphemisms and techno speak a lot of today's political and pseudo-scientific propaganda would be revealed to be the nonsense that it patently is and the Emperor would be displayed in all his naked glory and people might realise that the clothes don't make the man they just disguise him!

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Originally I simply wanted an improved thesaurus and inspired by the Dewar Decimal System I thought I would use a classification system that reflected what the word was about rather than what its title was:O)

What we generally think of as words are simply labels attached to a variation of agreed meanings that usually have little or no obvious connection other than by occasional, unreliable, grammatical rules.
There is added confusion in that the same label can have several diferent meanings and words like 'lead - the metal' and 'lead - to go in front' show that labels can even be pronounced differently without any indication from the label itself.

I wanted a system in which the word actually points directly to its meaning in a systematic and logical fashion. A lot like redefining Bar Code numbers to be related to the product they label rather than simply assigning them Ad Hoc.

The ambition grew into an attempt to define a new way of storing and classifying information - hence ClassyLang. Maybe I should have gone for Babylang :O)
I decided on a 32 bit word divided into 8 nibbles, which could be expressed as an 8 digit hexadecimal word, with the first 3 bits of the MSN (most significant nibble) classifying the word into Noun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb, Proposition, Conjunction and Literal and the other bit used as a flag (to denote the end of a sentence).

Depending on what type of word was denoted by the MSN different lists of properties would be set by the next nibble and so on down the remaining word...

i.e. for nouns properties like -
Abstract, Concrete, Absolute, Relative, Common, Pronoun etc.

and for verbs -
Transive, Intransive, Tense, Auxilary etc.
Started and Finished (completion) would be useful as well as perhaps 'Now' for triggering events.

Since all this would be transparent to the user the structure can be as inaccessable as machine code so long as it can be translated and interpreted with sufficient sophistication.
If it could be achieved then it should be possible to interpret the information in many different ways - into different languages, in a 'terse' or 'verbose' form, or even in a simple or technical form - simply by deciding what level of complexity the words should be allowed when output by the translator.

Originally Nouns were modified by Adjectives and Verbs by Adverbs and this was done by adding properties or adjusting their values.
Propositions modified relationships and Conjuctions allowed the joining of Classes or added new Members.

Later I began to try and modify the language to make it an ideal choice for AI...
since a language whose words actually had values which a computer could use to make decisions and comparisons is far superior to having to use Reserved words which must be defined and demand perfect grammar.

However, I finally realised that the job had become too big for any one man and would require a team of people from many different fields with a wide range of expertise.

My thoughts are that the early design attempts to be too ingenious and that it should be simplified to each nibble being used as a choice from a 16 member list. The members of the list (essentially the available properties of that type of word) would be dependent on the value of the preceeding nibble.

In general Nouns would own Adjectives and Verbs own Adverbs and the whole be owned by a sentence/concept.

There is much more to say about the benefits of such a system should it prove to be feasable and suitably implemented... I hope someone with the necessary vision and resources sees the value of such a language and continues its development!