Universal Language. Whereas the Port-Royal gram-
marians were concerned with laying bare the common
structure of actually existing languages, other thinkers
of the age went on from analysis to synthesis, attempt-
ing to construct a completely new, artificial language,
designed to serve as an ideal medium of communication
and thinking. Two men deserve mention above all
others: the English bishop John Wilkins, and the Ger-
man philosopher G. W. Leibniz.
Wilkins published in 1668 a large volume entitled
An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical
Language, under the auspices of the Royal Society.
Wilkins' “real character” is a kind of ideographic
script, constructed on completely rational principles,
and hence maximally systematic. (Wilkins explicitly
contrasted it with the Chinese script in this respect.)
He introduced some forty main characters, represent-
ing the main fields of human experience. Each of these
is further subdivided into genera (usually six) and spe-
cies (usually ten). By such a system, forty main signs,
plus six plus ten modifications of them, are capable
of distinguishing 40 × 6 × 10 = 2,400 different con-
cepts. For further refinement, compounding may be
resorted to. The main symbols with their modification
stand for what Wilkins called “principal words,”
covering nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Gram-
matical words or “particles” are represented by smaller
symbols above, below, and between the main charac-
ters. Superficially, a page in Wilkins' script is not unlike
a page of Arabic.
Though Wilkins' chief object was to create a means
of universal written communication, he also invented
a way of reading it. For just as any spoken language
can be reduced to writing, so any written text can be
translated into a spoken one. Wilkins maintained that
his language would be far easier to learn than a natural
language, because of its systematic structure:
Now in the way here proposed, the words necessary for
communication are not three thousand, and those so ordered
by the help of natural method, that they may be more easily
learned and remembered than a thousand words otherwise
disposed of; upon which account they may be reckoned but
as one thousand. And as for such Rules as are natural to
Grammar, they were not charged in the former account,
and therefore are not to be allowed for here. So that by
this it appears, that in point of easiness betwixt this and
the Latin, there is the proportion of one to forty...
(pp.
453-54).
The sentence about grammar refers to Wilkins' thesis
that any natural language has two sets of grammatical
rules: those common to all and those peculiar to each.
His own philosophical language is meant to include
only the former kind; the natural, universal rules.
Leibniz read Wilkins' book a few years after its
appearance, and valued it very highly. But Leibniz
wished to go further than Wilkins. His ultimate aim
was to create a language which should not only be
a subsidiary vehicle of communication, but an instru-
ment of thought. Leibniz had already revolutionized
mathematics by his invention of the higher calculus.
His characteristica universalis aimed at introducing a
calculus covering the whole field of human knowledge.
As he said to a correspondent:
... each line [written in this universal language] would be
a demonstration as in Arithmetic or Algebra. Two persons
disputing on a matter... would only have to say, let us
calculate... for in this way all errors would be nothing
but calculating errors, and easy to correct by means of
proofs similar to those... in arithmetic
(to Johann Fried-
rich, Duke of Hanover, ca. February 1679; Sämtliche
Schriften und Briefe, ed. Preussische Akademie der Wissen-
schaften, First Series, Darmstadt [1927], 2, 156; trans. Alvar
Ellegård).
In fact, Leibniz looked upon mathematics as simply
a sample (échantillon) of this all-embracing philo-
sophical language.
But in order to reach this high aim it was necessary
to have absolutely exact definitions of the terms that
were to be used. Wilkins had made a start by defining
quite a respectable portion of the English vocabulary
in terms of his own system. Leibniz made several
attempts to go beyond Wilkins. But he never managed
to bring his work to a conclusion: he realized that the
task was superhuman.
In our own time part of Leibniz' dream has been
realized in the language of symbolic logic. But in this
language the “principal words,” as Wilkins called
them, are not included. Attempts to represent formally
the semantic content of such words have, however,
been made, partly in connection with work on me-
chanical translation, partly as a result of the reorien-
tation of linguistics caused by the introduction of
transformational grammar. Uriel Weinreich, J. Katz,
and J. Fodor deserve special mention in this connec-
tion. But we have still achieved immensely less than
Leibniz' grand design. Wilkins' practical object, on the
other hand, has been pursued with some limited success
by the creators of artificial languages like Esperanto,
Ido, Volapük. None of these, however, even aims at
the thoroughgoing semantic consistency that Wilkins
tried to achieve, and that caught Leibniz' imagination.
