What is interlingustics?

Author: Vĕra Barandovská-Frank

Introduction: Jerzy Leyk

The term “interlinguistics” currently does not have a stable, uniformly accepted understanding among scientists. According to the current practice, the basic research objects of interlinguistics are languages of constructed/designed origin intended for thematically general human-human communication or simulating such communication (in imaginary, fictional worlds). The further development of such a language may be more or less natural (under the social influence of the users of a given language). The very study of these languages becomes interdisciplinary, as it concerns, among others, linguistic, social, psychological, historical, cultural (including literature), pedagogical, philosophical and political perspectives related to their formation and functioning.
There are authors who postulate a broader field of interlinguistics research, for example, the functioning of languages in supra-ethnic communication in general – more on that below.
In turn, programming languages used in computer science or symbol systems (e.g. scientific, trafic), although artificial, have not become the subject of interlinguistics research.
Interlinguistics in this sense includes “Esperantology” as a scientific approach to the Esperanto language and the research perspectives mentioned above.

Historical overview

Below are some basic historical facts explaining how this science began, developed and continues.
The term comes from the word interlingua, meaning “international auxiliary language”. It was first used by the Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano (Peano 1903:74). He himself proposed a simplified Latin for this role. In addition, he was the director of the language organization “Academia pro Interlingua”, whose member Jules Meysmans (Meysmans 1911:14) proposed calling “interlinguistics” a science dealing with setting standards for the construction of auxiliary languages.
The creation of languages already existed in antiquity and the Renaissance, most often in the framework of philosophy and in the Enlightenment. The first relatively widely used modern language, consciously constructed for international understanding, was the Volapük of the German prelate Johann Martin Schleyer (Schleyer 1880). A little later, Esperanto appeared, which still functions today, named after the author’s original pseudonym, the Jewish doctor Ludwik Zamenhof (Esperanto 1887). The “Academia pro Interlingua” itself was also involved in many other projects.
Its members included professional linguists, mainly the Danish phonetician and English scholar Otto Jespersen, who advocated interlinguistics as an independent language discipline. The beginning of his article “A new science: interlinguistics” (Jespersen 1930:57) is cited as the first definition of this science: “A new science is developing, Interlinguistics – that branch of the science of language which deals with the structure and basic ideas of all languages with the view to the establishing of a norm for interlanguages, i.e. auxiliary languages destined for oral and written use between people who cannot make themselves understood by means of their mother tongues.”)

It was a reaction to a conference held in 1930 in Geneva: IALA (International Auxiliary Language Association – founded in 1924 in New York), which evaluated several projects of international auxiliary languages and expressed the need for cooperation between linguists and interlinguists, i.e. between theory and practice. In particular, the Dutch Latinist Willem Manders postulated for interlinguistics not only the establishment of interlingual standards, but also the search for the most satisfactory solution to the problem of international language communication. In his book “Interlinguistics and Esperantology” (Manders 1950), Esperantology appears as an independent branch of interlinguistics, focused on Esperanto as the most possible solution.

The Austrian terminologist Eugen Wüster believed that interlinguistics should consciously influence the development of languages, including ethnic languages. He introduced the term Plansprache (“planned language”, Wüster 1931), with which he wanted to adequately translate into German the term “constructed language” used by Jespersen. According to Wüster, constructive linguistics could therefore be called Sprachplanung (“language planning”). The term “Plansprache” i.e. “planned language” as a synonym for “interlanguage” was adopted by German authors and Esperantists. In the 1980s, the term planning linguistics and the journal in Esperanto of the same name appeared.

In addition, there is the term language planning. The term was first used by the Swiss Germanist Frederic Bodmer (Bodmer 1944). Linguistic planning then concerned the development of already existing ethnic languages or dialects for national use, for example New Hebrew (a term applied by Haugen in 1948). In 1968, the Estonian linguist Valter Tauli (Tauli 1968) proposed a broader definition that also included international languages: “Language planning is the methodical activity of regulating and improving existing languages or creating new common regional, national or international languages.”). In his book “Introduction to a theory of language planning”, he defined interlinguistics as follows: “Interlinguistics can be defined as the science of international language (IL) planning, or more precisely, the branch of theory of language planning which investigates the principles, methods and tactics of IL planning. By IL is meant a universal language to be used as a means of communication by individuals belonging to different language communities.”) (Tauli 1968:41).

However, until the 1950s, interlinguistics dealt almost exclusively with planned languages, especially the activities of the professional interlinguistic organization IALA attracted the attention of linguists. After concluding that none of the existing auxiliary languages was fully suitable as an international language, the IALA launched its own Interlingua project in 1952, but it never reached a user base larger than Esperanto. Interlinguistics then stopped looking for/building an ideal auxiliary language and started following other paths.

The German Esperantist Artur Bormann (Bormann 1959/60:23) proposed three main subfields:

General interlinguistics should study the basic relationships between language, the individual and society, derive from these relationships the rules for choosing an international language and observe its political, cultural, sociological and economic consequences.
Special interlinguistics studies the relationship between international and national languages, observing how they influence each other – so in a sense, comparative interlinguistics.
Practical interlinguistics deals with the international language itself, its vocabulary, grammar, style and further development.

In the 1970s. the concept of interlinguistics included so many different approaches that there was even talk of “schools” (Haupenthal 1976: 1). One of them was the Soviet approach: dealing mainly with language policy, sociolinguistics, bilingualism, multilingualism and standardization of different ethnic languages, because the Soviet Union was a multinational and multilingual state. According to the Moscow linguist Sergei Kuznetsov (Kuznetsov 1982/1987), general interlinguistics should be interested in the linguistic situation of the world, multilingualism, international linguistic communication, mutual influences and linguistic internationalisms, solving problems of international communication using both natural and planned languages. Special interlinguistics should cover the theories of the individual planned languages, and thus also Esperantology. Sławist Aleksandr Dulichenko from the University of Tartu specialized in Pan-Slavic planned languages and is the founder of Slavic interlinguistics.

The Hungarian Slavist István Szerdahelyi founded the Esperanto Faculty at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and wrote a university textbook on interlinguistics (Szerdahelyi 1979). Contemporary concepts of interlinguistics are constantly expanding the field of their views. The German association of interlinguists Gesellschaft für Interlinguistik, founded in 1991 by Detlev Blanke (http://www.interlinguistik-gil.de), still practices his definition: interdisciplinary field of linguistics that studies the international language communication with its political, economic, linguistics, information theory and other aspects (in the original: “Die Interlinguistik ist eine interdisziplinäre sprachwissenschaftliche Disziplin, welche die internationale sprachliche Kommunikation mit allen ihren politischen, ökonomischen, linguistischen, informationstheoretischen und anderen Aspekten erforscht.“) (Blanke 1985: According to this approach, Interlinguistics has become science of interdisciplinary scope, cooperating with didactics, pedagogy, sociology, philosophy, documentation, semiotics, terminology, scientific communication, computer science, logic, cybernetics, other artificial technologies and many others, including culture and religion.

Hungarian linguist Ilona Koutny founded and since 1997 has been running the International Postgraduate Interlinguistic Studies at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (http://interl.amu.edu.pl/interlingvistiko/index.html). The studies last three years and combine stationary and online learning. The students acquire basic knowledge in the field of general linguistics, interlinguistics, international and intercultural communication and focus on linguistics, culture and the Esperanto movement. The final year is devoted to specialization, choosing between communication, linguistics, literature studies, translation, planning linguistics and teaching methodology. In 2022, regular full-time 2-year international master’s studies in interlinguistics began there as a specialization in the field of linguistics and information management (https://kml.amu.edu.pl/interlingwistyka/). The program includes linguistics subjects (linguistic typology, language policy and linguistic description of Esperanto), intercultural communication (in Esperanto) and information management subjects (in English).

Conlangs – constructed languages

The advent of the Internet in the 1990s brought a significant increase of interest in language construction. In 1991, the US newsgroup “Constructed Language Mailing List” (http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/conlang.html) began operating via email, with Rick Harrison’s Journal of Planned Languages and the creation of a multilingual dictionary with two thousand basic English words translated into various planned languages. This activity was strongly developed by the invention of the global network, which since 1994 has fully settled on the Internet. Interlinguistic communities created their websites en masse, which allowed for immediate dissemination.

The term “constructed languages”, once introduced by Otto Jespersen, was later shortened to “”conlang” to indicate all languages consciously constructed for whatever purpose. From this origins “conlanging” = languages construction, “conlanger” = creator of the language, author. The language of conlangers was from the beginning (American) English, especially due to the dominant American computer technology, which is mainly used by young people. The term “planned language” has come to be avoided due to its attachment to Esperanto, which is considered obsolete because international communication already works satisfactorily in English. This criticism led to a schism that in 1996 separated all auxiliary languages (“auxlang“) from the “Constructed Languages Mailing List”. The American linguist Jay Bowks collected them in his Projecto Auxlingua (1996-2005). He finally realized that the number of “auxlangs” was still growing bringing no solution, as projects compete with each other and none reaches a significant user community. After introducing Wikipedia, Jay Bowks devoted himself to Wikipedia in Interlingua.

While new auxiliary language projects number in hundreds, the number of other “conlangs” built for fun and experimental purposes (artlangs = art languages and engelangs = engineering languages) swells to thousands. Jeffrey Henning collected in his Langmaker (1995-2008) portal democratically all kinds of conlangs, making language creation an intellectual hobby in his journal Model Languages: just as you build model trains, for example, you can create languages (models) for fun. The portal became very popular and connected to numerous discussion groups, underwent several transformations and finally collapsed due to computer viruses. Some of the materials have been published in book form (Henning 2020). Currently, the number of portals more or less specialized in various types of conlangs is insurmountable. Let’s just call Mark Rosenfelder’s Zompist (http://www.zompist.com/). First, he published online, then in book form, The Language Construction Kit, and then a series of books for advanced authors of “artlangs” (Rosenfelder 2010, 2012, 2013, 2018, etc).

The interest in artistic languages in fantasy and science fiction works has grown enormously thanks to the American series of films, including Star Trek with Klingon, Avatar with Na’vi and Games of Thrones with Valyrian and Dothraki languages. These languages were built by contracted linguists. David Peterson, author of the latter two, (co-)founded the Language Creation Society (https://conlang.org) in 2007, a professional conlanging organization that offers the creation of artistic languages primarily for the entertainment industry (movies, novels, websites, advertisements, festivals, computer games, etc.), and also includes two hundred “conlangers” from around the world who contact not only remotely, but also during stationary conferences. Peterson has meanwhile created other artistic languages and teaches “conlanging” according to his book (Peterson 2015).

The interest in such fantasy languages is evidently so great that the Italian computer linguist Federico Gobbo proposes a new branch of interlinguistics called Hollywood linguistics (Gobbo 2020:38), which he teaches (in English) at the special faculty of the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA) at the University of Amsterdam. An introduction to interlinguistics is offered alternately in the first semester and an Esperanto course in the second semester, four hours a week.

Conclusions

As you can see, the content of the subject of science and study called “Interlinguistics” is constantly evolving. A wide spectrum of possible fields can be considered as an enrichment of research work, and it is discussed what should be included in this discipline: whether it includes language planning (design) and linguistic standardization of ethnic languages, or the development of pidgins and creole languages (as for example proposed by students from Poznań), should it be interested in translations, codes, programming languages and artificial intelligence, should it focus on conlanging (see Stria 2016) and Hollywood designed languages, what role should traditional planned languages and Esperanto play (see Koutny 2015), whether English should be studied as a lingua franca, etc. Therefore, a precise definition of interlinguistics and a uniform opinion on its research areas are still being sought. Its quality and further development also depend on a professional approach and the existence of appropriate study departments, whether at universities or other equivalent institutions and associations that are not limited to the Esperanto community (cf. Barandovská-Frank 2018, 2020).

Translation from Esperanto: JL

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