Engineered languages (often abbreviated toengelangs, or, less commonly,engilangs) areconstructed languages devised to test or prove some hypotheses about how languages work or might work. There are at least three subcategories,philosophical languages (or ideal languages), logical languages (sometimes abbreviated asloglangs), andexperimental languages. Raymond Brown describes engineered languages as "languages that are designed to specifiedobjective criteria, and modeled to meet those criteria".[1]
Some engineered languages have been considered candidate globalauxiliary languages, and some languages intended as international auxiliary languages have certain "engineered" aspects (in which they are more regular and systematic than their natural language sources).
Logical languages are meant to allow (or enforce) syntactically unambiguous statements. They are typically based onpredicate logic but can also be based on any system of formallogic. The two best-known logical languages are the predicate languagesLoglan and its successorLojban. They both aim to eliminatesyntactical ambiguity and reducesemantic ambiguity to a minimum. In particular, thegrammar of Lojban is carefully engineered to express such predicate logic in an unambiguous manner.Toaq andEberban are also logical languages.
Philosophical languages are designed to reflect some aspect of philosophy, particularly with respect to the nature or potential of any given language.John Wilkins'Real Character and Edward Powell Foster'sRo constructed their words using a taxonomic tree. Vocabularies ofoligosynthetic languages, for exampleaUI[2] and Ygyde,[3][4] are made ofcompound words, which are coined from a small (theoretically minimal) set ofmorphemes. Sonja Lang'sToki Pona is based onminimalisticsimplicity.
An experimental language is aconstructed language designed for the purpose of exploring some element in the theory oflinguistics. Most such languages are concerned with the relation betweenlanguage and thought; however, languages have been constructed to explore other aspects of language as well.
Inscience fiction, much work has been done on the assumption popularly known as theSapir–Whorf hypothesis.Suzette Haden Elgin'sLáadan is designed to lexicalize and grammaticalize the concepts and distinctions important to women, based onmuted group theory.
Story of Your Life is a short story byTed Chiang that heavily features a written-only non-linear language (text in it has no discernible beginning or end) in the form of itsHeptapod B, though the language is only described vaguely and never actually shown. This story was adapted into the movieArrival, though its version ofHeptapod B is only non-linear to a certain extent.
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