Mixed artificial languages by Alan Libert (review)

The term ‘mixed artificial languages’ in the book title refers to languages that in part are created from scratch and in part draw on a significant amount of linguistic material from existing natural languages. This book is a survey of sixteen mixed artificial languages (MALs) and contains a discussion of their phonetics (Ch. 2), lexicon (Ch. 3), morphology (Ch. 4), syntax (Ch. 5), and semantics (Ch. 6). The book concludes with references to both printed and internet sources (104–6).

Ten of the sixteen MALs were created during the nineteenth century and six in the twentieth. The best-known MAL of those listed is Volapük, devised by the Swiss priest J. M. Schleyer in 1879–80; it is based largely on English but with some root words from Latin, French, and German.

The phonemic inventories of MALs range from nineteen (Balta and the Blue Language) to forty-eight (Nal Bino). The position of the stress is invariably predictable and none of these MALs is a tone language.

The quite extensive chapter covering morphology (32–89) takes up such grammatical categories as number, gender, and case of nouns; personal, possessive, demonstrative, reflexive, and reciprocal pronouns; person, number, tense, aspect, and mood of verbs; and other linguistic forms and major form classes. The gender in all MALs is natural, and only singular and plural are marked; but the number of cases is as high as five (in Bopal). Verbs distinguish in the indicative mood as few tenses as two (in Pankel) and as many as nine (in Qôsmianî: three primary, three perfective, and three prospective). Gilo has a large number of aspectual verb forms—thirty-one are listed, including ‘perdurative’ expressing an action that lasts longer than expected and ‘devolutive’ for an action that decreases in intensity or degree.

Not much information on syntax is available, but Libert summarizes what little he has found on word order in sentences and the construction of noun phrases. In the two-page chapter on semantics, L deals with synonymy, ambiguity and homonymy, idioms, and figurative language.

The author, a faculty member at the University of Newcastle, specializes in artificial language movements and structures and has published several books on artificial languages. However, with English rapidly becoming the unofficial world language, interest in artificial languages has been steadily waning.