aUI (artificial language)

aUI
Created by	W. John Weilgart, Ph.D.
Date	1962
Setting and usage	Designed to dissolve the discrepancy between homonymous and synonymous words.
Purpose	auxiliary language logical or philosophical language a priori oligosynthetic aUI
Language codes
ISO 639-2	art
ISO 639-3	–

aUI was created around 1962 by W. John Weilgart, Ph.D. (1913-1981), a philosopher and psychoanalyst originally from Vienna. Because of its structure it is classified as an a priori, logical language or philosophical language.

Background/History

As a young man, Weilgart observed how Hitler's alliterative slogans, spewed threateningly over loudspeakers and radio into the despairing masses, had the power to focus frustration and hatred onto a scapegoat race. Citing research from the Pavlov Institute he theorized that the subconscious mind associates assonance (whereas the conscious mind links synonyms). That is, while we think about and distinguish similar sounding words by their meaning, we nonetheless feel at some level that there is (or ought to be) a semantic relationship between them. Alliterative slogans may suggest a link in words unrelated by meaning but related by common sounds. Weilgart posited that such slogans, while not the cause or sole factor, could ignite war under incendiary conditions. Further, he believed that the general discrepancy between homonymous and synonymous words in conventional language could exacerbate a disconnect with the subconscious mind.

Weilgart followed Gottfried Leibniz' proposal for an alphabet of human thought that would provide a universal way to analyze ideas by breaking down their component pieces - to be represented by a unique "real" character. In the early 18th century, Leibniz outlined his characteristica universalis, the basic elements of which would be pictographic characters representing a limited number of elementary concepts. René Descartes suggested that a lexicon of a universal language should consist of primitive elements. The history of this language philosophy is delineated in Umberto Eco's The Search for the Perfect Language.

Characteristics

aUI is built upon a proposed set of (at least near-) universal semantic primes or elements of meaning that are intuitively combined to create miniature definitions of essential meaning. Weilgart's goal in design was to build an intrinsic relationship between linguistic subsystems -- phonetic, morphologic, and semantic. There is an intuitive relationship between sound, symbol, and meaning, such that words with shared sounds or symbols also have a relationship in meaning: what sounds or looks similar also means similar. As such it could be considered a 'rogue'* experiment in applied cognitive lexical semantics, and could function as an auxiliary language (*in reference to mainstream linguistics). aUI has 31 morpheme-phonemes (plus 11 nasalized variations on the vowels for numbers), each with an associated meaning, i.e. each morpheme = a phoneme = a sememe.

• a /a/: 'Space'
• e /ɛ/: 'Movement'
• i /ɪ/: 'Light'
• u /ʊ/: 'Human'
• o /ɔ/: 'Life'
• y /y/: 'Negation'
• q /œ/: 'Condition'
• A /ä/: 'Time'
• E /e/: 'Matter'
• I /i/: 'Sound'
• U /u/: 'Spirit/Mind'
• O /o/: 'Feeling'

• b: 'Together'
• c /ʃ/: 'Existence/Being'
• d: 'Through'
• f: 'This'
• g: 'Inside'
• h: 'Question'
• j /ʒ/: 'Equal'
• k: 'Above'
• l: 'Round'
• m: 'Quality'
• n: 'Quantity'
• p: 'Before'
• r: 'Good/Positive'
• s: 'Thing'
• t: 'Toward'
• v: 'Action'
• w: 'Power'
• x /x/: 'Relation'
• z: 'Part'

The phoneme ⟨b⟩, for instance, meaning "Together", is a bilabial stop, pronounced with the lips pressed together. "Light" is pronounced with a short ⟨i⟩, as the brightest, highest-frequency sound, while "Sound," is pronounced with a longer ⟨I⟩, because sound travels more slowly than light.

Each phoneme also has an ideographic glyph or symbol that represents its meaning. The symbol for ⟨a⟩, meaning "Space", for instance, is a circle showing an open space. The symbol for ⟨e⟩, meaning "Movement", follows the movement of a spiral nebula. The ⟨u⟩, meaning "Human", is a caret shape, the two legs or arms of the human being, also suggesting his dichotomous nature. The ⟨o⟩, meaning "Life", is represented by the shape of a leaf, photosynthesis forming the basis of all life. The ⟨v⟩, meaning "Action", is represented by a lightning bolt, the most active thing in nature. The character for ⟨g⟩, meaning "Inside", is a dot inside a circle. The character for ⟨t⟩, meaning "Toward", is a one-sided arrow shape pointing towards the right.

aUI attempts oligosynthesis. The expressing of its semantic primitives each as a morpheme that is only one phoneme long is not without precedent: cf. Solresol, where each primitive is a morpheme that is one or two syllables long; and Wilkins' Real Characters, where morphemes are (usually) only one phoneme long, but operate in semantic classification instead of semantic primitives.

Short nasal vowels (marked with an asterisk) are used for numerals: ⟨y*⟩ 0, ⟨a*⟩ 1, ⟨e*⟩ 2, ⟨i*⟩ 3, ⟨u*⟩ 4, ⟨o*⟩ 5, ⟨A*⟩ 6, ⟨E*⟩ 7, ⟨I*⟩ 8, ⟨U*⟩ 9, ⟨O*⟩ 10.

aUI is taught in Weilgart's textbook, aUI, The Language of Space, 1979, 4th ed. The word aUI means 'Space-Mind-Sound' or 'Space-Language'. Its companion book by the same author analyzes this language more deeply, Cosmic Elements of Meaning: Symbols of the Spirit's Life (1975).

External links and references

• Libert, Alan (2000), A Priori Artificial Languages, Lincom Europa, Munich. ISBN 3-89586-667-9
• [1] The "Language of Space"
• [2] or [3], the official aUI website