On the contrary, the Austral language uses a very limited battery of primitives but must serve to express every possible experience, that is, to replace through compositions of primitives the entire vocabulary. Thus, as can be seen from the quotation above, it must employ periphrases that, in Foigny’s satirical version, are highly questionable metaphors: apple becomes sweet and desirable water, and the act of loving is expressed as af (dry fire), or burning derived from the fire of passion. If dry fire means love, then why should wet fire not be able to mean metaphorically some other thing? The problem that arises, analyzing this caricature of language, is a serious problem: if a few primitives must denominate many things, it is indispensable to recur to periphrasis, and this is precisely what happens with the “serious” projects of Wilkins and Dalgarno. And the confines between periphrasis and metaphorical expression can become very hazy. In fact, in Dalgarno’s serious project compounds were introduced on the order of “animal + full-hoofs + spirited” to signify horse and “animal + full-hoofs + huge” to signify elephant.
The equally serious project of Wilkins was based on the fact that all ambiguities of language had to be reduced so that every sign would refer to a single, rigorously defined concept. But some metaphorical operators were introduced to allow the language to express entities for which no terms existed in the philosophical dictionary, whose format had inevitably to be reduced. Wilkins asserts that it is not necessary to have a character for calf because the concept can be reached by combining cow and young; nor does one need a primitive lioness, since this animal can be denoted by combining the sign for female to that for lion. Thus Wilkins develops in his grammar (and then transforms into a system of special signs in the part devoted to the writing and pronunciation of the characters) a system of “Transcendental Particles” intended to amplify or alter the character to which they are applied.
The list contemplates eight classes amounting to a total of forty-eight particles, but the criterion that assembles them is not at all systematic. Wilkins harks back to Latin grammar, which makes use of endings/suffixes (that allow the creation of terms like lucesco, aquosus, homunculus); of “segregates” such as tim and genus (allowing the creation, from a root, of gradatim or multigenus); and determinations of place (hence vestiarium) and agent (cf. arator). Some of his particles are without doubt of a grammatical nature (for example, those that transform masculine into feminine or adult into young). But Wilkins himself recurs also to the criteria of rhetoric, citing metaphor, synecdoche, and metonymy, and, in fact, the particles in the metaphorical-like category are simply signs of rhetorical interpretation. Thus, adding one of these particles to root one gains original, while adding it to light yields evident. Finally, other particles seem to refer to the cause-effect relation, or container–thing contained, or function-activity, as in the following examples:
like + foot = pedestal
like + blood = crimson
place + metal = mine
officer + navy = admiral
artist + star = astronomer
voice + lion = roar
From the point of view of linguistic precision, this is the weakest part of the project. In fact, Wilkins, who supplies a long list of examples of the correct application of such particles, warns that they are, in fact, examples. Therefore the list is open, and its enrichment depends on the inventiveness of the speaker. It seems almost that Wilkins, concerned about the mechanical quality of his language, is anxious to leave room for its users’ creativity. But once the user is free to apply these particles to any term, it is obvious that ambiguity will be hard to avoid.
And so the artificial language loses its one virtue: that of denoting always and only the same thing with the same character.
The Austral language (like the models it parodies) deliberately rejects the fundamental mechanism of every natural language, namely, double articulation. It is obvious how much double articulation (in which the units of second articulation are without meaning) can contribute to the free formation of neologisms. If, with three meaningless characters (p, o, t), I can compose six syntagma (pot, top, opt, pto, otp, tpo), and only three of these are admitted by the dictionary, the other three remain available for constructing neologisms or indicating the most subtle differences between otherwise similar entities. As long as they remain available, however, if they happen to appear in a context, they may be understood as errors in pronunciation or spelling.
Foigny’s system, on the one hand, allows the creation of neologisms only through metaphor and, on the other, obliges us to seek out a meaning for every syntagm admitted by the ars combinatoria, because even the slightest phonetic or orthographic change immediately reflects on the content and denotes a different (and possible) entity.
Finally, the last limitation of the Austral language is—as occurred with many a priori philosophical languages—the absolute casualness with which the primitives are chosen. We will not speak of the so-called Anonymous Spaniard (Pedro Bermudo), who classified the primitives, subdividing them into:
1) Elements (fire, wind, smoke, ash, hell, purgatory, and center of the earth).
2) Celestial entities (stars, lightning, rainbow).
3) Intellectual entities (God, Jesus, discourse, opinion, suspicion, soul, stratagem or specter).
4) Secular states (emperor, barons, plebs).
5) Ecclesiastical states.
6) Artificers (painter or sailor).
7) Instruments.
8) Affects (love, justice, lust).
9) Religion.
10) Sacramental confession.
11) Tribunal.
12) Army.
13) Medicine (doctor, hunger, enema).
14) Brute animals.
15) Birds.
16) Reptiles and fish.
17) Parts of animals.
18) Furnishings.
19) Foods.
20) Beverages and liquids (wine, beer, water, butter, wax, resin).
21) Clothing.
22) Silken stuffs.
23) Woolens.
24) Canvas and other textiles.
25) Navigation and spices (ship, cinnamon, anchor, chocolate).
26) Metals and coins.
27) Various artifacts.
28) Stones.
29) Jewels.
30) Trees and fruits.
31) Public places.
32) Weights and measures.
33) Numerals.
34–42) Various grammatical categories.
43) Persons (pronouns, forms of address such as His Eminence).
44) Travel (hay, road, robber) …
but Wilkins himself, though he discussed his list with students of botany, mineralogy, and zoology, put under the heading of Economic Relations not only cases of kinship, in which distinctions appear distorted by criteria such as Progenitor/Descendant, Brother/Half-brother, or Coelebs/Virgin (Coelebs, however, comprises both the bachelor and the spinster, whereas Virgin seems to refer only to a female condition), but also acts that refer to intersubjective relationships, such as Direct/Seduce or Defense/Desertion. Among the Private Relations appear also Provisions, where we find Butter/Cheese but also Butchering/Cooking and Box/Basket.
Note the sly way that Foigny breaks the homogeneity of the list of the four classic elements by adding salt, which, if anything, would belong to another chemical-alchemistic taxonomy, including also mercury and sulfur. But the slyness is not gratuitous precisely because Wilkins added to the four elements a fifth, evident one: the Meteor.
As for the thirty-six accidentals, even if we know only eighteen of them, their heterogeneity is enough for us to infer that the list has prominent omissions. Here Foigny touches palpably the crucial question of the list of the primitives, and he resolves it more in the manner of the Anonymous Spaniard than in that of Wilkins, but only to insinuate (it seems) that, when it comes to incongruity, there is only a difference of degree between the two systems.
The final comic element in the Austral language is that it does not clarify when a letter has a lexical function or when it is morphemathic. It seems that l, m, and p—placed in the first position—function as pronouns. But, in analyzing pa (thou lovest), Foigny speaks of the sweetness of the lover. Thus he assigns to two letters with morphemathic functions the meaning they have when they define accidentals. The solution is comic because it allows us to think that lu (I work) must be interpreted with reference to the sweat produced by the earth, but in that case why would there be sweetness in pu (thou workest)?
We cannot tell how consciously Foigny was being ironic about the fact that in the philosophical languages the entire grammar is semanticized, but this mischievousness is not to be overlooked.
Criticism of a priori philosophical languages for the most part appears, as I have shown, in French satirical works. Perhaps this is not an accident: it was in France that the first radical criticism of the project took shape in the serious works of Dalgarno, Wilkins, and Lodwick.
In 1629 the Minim friar Marin Mersenne sends his friend Descartes the project of a nouvelle langue by a certain des Vallées. In a letter to Mersenne on 20 November 1629, Descartes sends his impressions of that proposal. For every language, he says, it is necessary to learn a grammar and the meaning of the words. For the meaning of the words it would suffice to have a good dictionary, but the grammar is difficult. Nevertheless, if a grammar could be constructed free of the irregularities of the natural languages, which have been corrupted by use, the problem would be solvable. Thus simplified, this language would appear primitive compared to the others, which would appear as its dialects. And once the primitive terms were set (of which the terms of the other languages would be synonyms, such as aimer and to love), it would suffice to add the affixes to obtain, for example, the corresponding substantive. Consequently, a system of universal writing could be developed in which every primitive term would be recorded with a number that would refer back to the synonyms in the different languages.
All the same, there would still remain the problem of the sounds to choose for these terms, inasmuch as certain sounds are pleasant and easy
