Language of Space aUI

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aUI, also known as the "Language of Space" is a philosophical auxlang created in the 1950s by John W. Weilgart, PhD, an Austrian-born philosopher, psychoanalyst, and professor of psychology. The idea for aUI originated from boyhood vision, but grew into a serious, idealistic pursuit when as a young man, Weilgart experienced the power of the alliterative propaganda under the rise of the Hitler regime. He was able to incorporate the creative and transparent aspect of aUI as an analytical modality in his work as a psychotherapist [1]. The fourth edition of the aUI textbook, aUI, The Language of Space, was published in 1979 (ISBN 0-912038-08X), and a newsletter that was published sporadically during the 1980s and '90s. Although Weilgart died in 1981, his daughter continues to develop and promote the language on the official website.

Uniqueness: aUI is a philosophical a priori language based on a set of (42) proposed (near-) universal semantic primitives, each designated with a simple ideograph, from which words from any culture can theoretically be created. Mini-definitions of a word's essential meaning, analogous to chemical formulas, are composed from these atomic elements of meaning. aUI resolves much of the arbitrary nature of existing languages and incorporates an inherently meaningful relationship between Sound, Symbol, and Meaning, between Word, Meaning, and Reality.

Language Sources: It is essentially a priori, but based on a wide knowledge base of a dozen different languages (incl. Japanese), philosophy/philology, psychoanalysis, Jungian archetypes, and semantic conditioning experiments (e.g. G. Razran, 1939 [2]; Luria, A. R., & Vinogradova, O. S. 1959 [3]).

Design Principles: The semantic primitives were chosen to be semantically irreducible concepts that are no more simply defined in a dictionary, and therefore make up a finite set from which all other words could be created. They are proposed to be conceptually universal to all languages and cultures. Combinations of elements define the essential or salient meaning of a word. Sound, symbol, and meaning are congruent in that there is an intrinsically meaningful relationship between them: e.g. two dots connected together (like a telephone receiver) means "together" and is pronounced \b\, a bilabial stop, with lips pressed together.

Classification: aUI is a prime example of an oligosynthetic conlang. The language may also be considered an engelang and loglang due to its congruent internal structure. A hint of this can be given by examining just a few words from the vocabulary list: just as there is an intrinsic relationship between sound, symbol, and meaning, so word formulations sharing similar phonemes and morphemes also share some aspect of their meaning.

• "plant" is io "Light-Life"
• "animal" is eo "Moving-Life"; as a simple ending it is os "Living-Thing"
• "domestic animal" is ubos "Human-Together-Living-Thing"
• "dog" is waubos "Power-Space--domestic animal" (protective of its territory)
• "cat" is bôzvos "Together-Five-Part-Make-animal" (from 5 clawed 'parts make parts' as in split or scratch)

References

1) Weilgart, W.J. (1958). A psycho-symbolic language of semantic therapy. International Language Review, 4, no. 11.

2) Razran, G. (1939). A quantitative study of meaning by a conditioned salivary technique (semantic conditioning). Science, 90, 89-90.

3) Luria, A. R., & Vinogradova, O. S. (1959). An objective investigation of the dynamics of semantic systems. British Journal of Psychology, 50, 89–105.)

External links

• Official website
• Luria and Vinogradova, 1959
• aUI discussion forum on Reddit
• part of an article by Weilgart describing the use of aUI in psychotherapy
• some pages from a 1986 aUI newsletter
• Wikipedia article