Talk:A priori (languages)

Merge?

 * Removed merge tag per discussion. Kerowyn 12:05, 15 January 2006 (UTC)


 * As a lay person, it seems to me that philosophical language is very much the same thing as a priori language. I propose a merge of these two pages.  This was not discussed in the archived discussion mentioned above. -Pgan002 10:39, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
 * A priori languages are not the same thing as philosophical languages. Philosophical languages are made around principles, while a priori languages may or may not be. To be an a priori language means that the constructed language wasn't based around a natural language, it doesn't necessarily have to be a philosophical language. Many artistic languages are a priori but aren't based around an idea like philosophical languages. --209.173.1.126 (talk) 18:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Jespersen
Did Otto Jespersen first use this term in one of his books?--Jeffrey Henning 02:37, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Oranges
For example, "oranges" might be described as "red fruit".

I thought oranges were, you know, orange.--AdamHeurlin 14:31, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I went ahead and changed it to apple. 66.46.152.30 18:22, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

A priori != classificational

 * In a more narrow sense, a priori constructed languages are those which try to categorize their vocabulary, either to express a philosophical underlying system, or to make it easier to memorize the completely new vocabulary. The first letter or syllable of a word may express the class (verb, noun, attribute), while the second may serve to classify the word in case as referring to something alive, dead, or artificial, and so on.

I think this is falsely making an equivalence between a priori languages and classificational languages. Not all a priori languages are classificational, and perhaps not all classificicational languages are a priori (though two of the examples given in the article, Ro and Solresol, are both). Can anyone cite support for this narrow usage of the term? --Jim Henry 17:01, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

A posteriori language?
Shouldn't there also be an article about a posteriori constructed languages? Currently, that redirects to constructed languages. Or should the content of this article (A priori (languages)) be included in Constructed languages? Or perhaps there should be an article about a priori and a posteriori languages, redirected to both from a priori language and from a posteriori language? -Pgan002 11:02, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Merge A priori (languages) and A posteriori (languages)
I move we merge the articles A priori (languages) and A posteriori (languages): they describe concepts that are dual of each other and each short articles. (The merge proposal above from 2006, whose rejection I agree with, was about merging these to A priori and a posteriori. Quarl (talk) 07:51, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Active discussion is at Talk:A posteriori (languages) – Wbm1058 (talk) 15:33, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Solresol is not a good example of an a priori language
While it is considered to be an a priori language, it still bears a heavy burden of the nineteenth century French language and culture. This can be seen both in its grammar and vocabulary - among the most obvious things is the lack of words for 70 and 90, so you have to use 60+10 (soixante-dix) and 4*20+10 (quatre vingt dix) respectively. Another one is its abundance of terms describing different political structures/titles (a separate word for "Minister of the Marine and Colonies" or "Grand Officer" is clearly a sign of the bygone era). Also, the grammar seems too complicated for an a priori language and heavily influenced by a synthetic language speaker's thinking. Had Francois Sudre spoken a non-European language such as Chinese, he could have created a simpler and more viable language. Phil Shary (talk) 01:30, 24 February 2015 (UTC)Phil Shary