History of Interlingua - Development of A New Language

Development of A New Language

Originally, the association had not set out to create its own language. Its goal was to identify which auxiliary language already available was best suited for international communication, and how to promote it most effectively. However, after ten years of research, more and more members of IALA concluded that none of the existing interlanguages were up to the task. By 1937, the members had made the decision to create a new language, to the surprise of the world's interlanguage community.

To that point, much of the debate had been equivocal on the decision to use naturalistic (e.g., Novial and Occidental) or systematic (e.g., Esperanto and Ido) words. During the war years, proponents of a naturalistic interlanguage won out. The first support was Dr. Thorndike's paper; the second was a concession by proponents of the systematic languages that thousands of words were already present in many – or even a majority – of the European languages. Their argument was that systematic derivation of words was a Procrustean bed, forcing the learner to unlearn and re-memorize a new derivation scheme when a usable vocabulary was already available. This finally convinced supporters of the systematic languages, and IALA from that point assumed the position that a naturalistic language would be best.

At the outbreak of World War II, IALA's research activities were moved from Liverpool to New York, where E. Clark Stillman established a new research staff. Stillman, with the assistance of Dr. Alexander Gode, developed a prototyping technique – an objective methodology for selecting and standardizing vocabulary based on a comparison of control languages.

In 1943 Stillman left for war work and Gode became Acting Director of Research. In 1945, IALA published a General Report – largely Morris's work – which presented three models for IALA's language:

• Model P was a naturalistic model that made no attempt to regularize the prototyped vocabulary.
• Model E was lightly schematicized along the lines of Occidental.
• Model K was moderately schematicized along the lines of Ido (i.e., somewhat less schematicized than Esperanto).

From 1946 to 1948, the renowned French linguist André Martinet was Director of Research. During this period IALA continued to develop models and conducted polling to determine the optimal form of the final language. An initial survey gauged reactions to the three models of 1945. In 1946, IALA sent an extensive survey to more than 3,000 language teachers and related professionals on three continents.