Philosophical Language

A philosophical language is any constructed language that is constructed from first principles, like a logical language, but may entail a strong claim of absolute perfection or transcendent or even mystical truth rather than satisfaction of pragmatic goals. Philosophical languages were popular in Early Modern times, partly motivated by the goal of recovering the lost Adamic or Divine language. The term ideal language is sometimes used near-synonymously, though more modern philosophical languages such as Toki Pona are less likely to involve such an exalted claim of perfection.

In most older philosophical languages, and some newer ones, words are constructed from a limited set of morphemes that are treated as "elemental" or fundamental. "Philosophical language" is sometimes used synonymously with "taxonomic language", though more recently there have been several conlangs constructed on philosophical principles which are not taxonomic. Vocabularies of oligosynthetic languages are made of compound words, which are coined from a small (theoretically minimal) set of morphemes; oligoisolating languages, such as Toki Pona, similarly use a limited set of root words but produce phrases which remain series of distinct words.

Láadan is designed to lexicalize and grammaticalize the concepts and distinctions important to women, based on muted group theory. Toki Pona is based on minimalistic simplicity, incorporating elements of Taoism.

A priori languages are constructed languages where the vocabulary is invented directly, rather than being derived from other existing languages (as with Esperanto or Interlingua). Philosophical languages are almost all a priori languages, but most a priori languages are not philosophical languages. For example, Quenya, Sindarin, and Klingon are all a priori but not philosophical languages: they are meant to seem like natural languages, even though they have no genetic relation to any natural languages.