George Dalgarno is an interesting character whom one might describe as the first AITist - well not quite, for he admits a sense of the verb 'to be' which is derived from 'Being, ' but at least he says this is quite distinct from the use of the verb as the copula. He is the only historical  grammarian that I can see that has any idea of how the processant works and if he were alive today  he would  understand the Heideggerian farcicality of the double-decker 'ontological difference.' He takes the two propositions which are almost exactly the same as the arguments discussed in the early days of the AITist (analytical indicant theory) although our early discussions took place in English.

Dalgarno gives us: "Homo est ens" and "Homo est." translated as: "*Man is being, " and "*Man is." and goes on to speculate that If it is admitted that the first is a legitimate proposition he has made his point, for "ens" expresses being, "est" does not (for if it did "ens" would be redundant.) If it is objected that "ens" is redundant, and that "*Homo est" means exactly the same as "*Homo est ens" he replies that either "*Homo est ens" is not a legitimate proposition (because a proposition must contain subject, copula and predicate)) or, if it is legitimate, then "est" must be expanded into two terms, i. e. est ens, "The man is being stupid" or whatever, so as to express fully the copula and predicate. In which case he makes his point in the same way as before.

His second argument is also interesting and something with which us AITists have only touched upon tangentially. It is, he says, generally agreed that the verb 'be' is nothing more than the formal part of a proposition, that is, the sign of a mental act of judgment. Judgment is twofold, agreement or disagreement; hence there are two forms of the verb 'be,' affirmative and negative, which are modifications of the ideas of affirmation and denial, and according to the rules governing the Predicaments, must be conceived as names, that is as nouns.' It is indeed interesting that the great Indian Panini considered all words to have their origin in verbs, and here we have Dalgarno believing that all verbs have their origins as nouns.

Dalgarno then reinforces his emphasis on the copulative function of the verb by separating from it the expression of time, {as AITists originally did with their arrow symbols < for the past and for the future etc] which is purely contingent. It is therefore, he says, quite correct to regard, as some people do, 'yes' (ita) and 'no' (non) as proper logical verbs: they are signs of an act of judgment. He then proceeds to separate the idea of negation from the copulative function of the verb. His illustration is brief. In the negative proposition "Homo non est laudabilis" [the man is not laudable] the non implies an 'assertion-is' equivalent logically to "non est; " the "est" is therefore redundant.


Dalgarno argued that the Fall had corrupted the original language of Adam, but that the pure Hebrew which had been spoken by Noah and his descendants had initially preserved much of that real character. However, the confusion of languages which took place at the Tower of Babel was, for Dalgarno, a dreadful miracle, in which new mother tongues were created by God to disperse mankind, and after which Hebrew, like all other languages, was subject to continual decay. These were the curses which the real character, by purifying understandings as well as increasing communication, might help to lift.

George Dalgarno's Art of Signs (Ars Signorum, 1661) was the first work in the seventeenth century to present a fully elaborated universal language constructed on philosophical principles. It contains a wealth of observations on human language and the nature of representation in general, and the author takes issue with leading philosophers of his day, notably Hobbes and Descartes, on epistemological and logical questions. By including the first complete English translation alongside the Latin, the present edition makes this seminal text accessible to a wider audience. In bringing together for the first time the full range of Dalgarno's linguistic work - which has striking resonance with modern work in universal grammar and cognitive science - this volume gives ready access to the ideas of this original and stimulating thinker.

The creation of a universal and philosophical language was a widely discussed topic in the seventeenth century. One of the goals to be achieved by putting such a language into practice was to overcome language barriers. Another goal was to have a language that was more efficient and easier to learn than existing ones. Furthermore, the envisaged artificial languages were meant to incorporate an accurate representation of knowledge, so that learning the language would entail acquiring knowledge of the world of nature. Some authors even believed that a philosophical language could be instrumental in the growth of knowledge in being a tool that greatly improved our thinking. Many efforts were made towards the construction of artificial symbol systems of various kinds. Among the schemes that were completed, those of two English authors stand out for presenting fully-fledged artificial languages. These were 'Ars Signorum' (1661) by George Dalgarno (c. 1620-1687), and the 'Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language' (1668) by John Wilkins

Dalgarno's philosophical language developed out of a series of earlier schemes. The various stages that Dalgarno's scheme went through are described, partly on the basis of a hitherto unpublished autobiographical treatise. Shortly after moving from Aberdeen to Oxford in 1657, Dalgarno endeavoured to improve a shorthand system. His efforts evolved into drawing up a scheme for a universal writing system, which came to the attention of leading Oxford scholars, among whom was Wilkins. Dalgarno and Wilkins collaborated on developing the scheme further, but it soon turned out that they had irreconcilable differences of opinion on how a philosophical language ought to be structured. Dalgarno's approach was 'analytic', that is, he wanted to build the language on a relatively small foundation of so-called radical words, which were to designate basic concepts. Words for all other concepts and kinds of things were to be formed by means of compounding radical words. In such a way, Dalgarno was convinced, a language could be constructed that was rational, efficient, and most suitable for the expression of a logical analysis of thought. Wilkins's approach, by contrast, was encyclopedic. In his opinion, the most important feature of the lexicon of the philosophical language was that the radical words were based on a classification scheme modelled on the Aristotelian theory of categories. In reflecting the classification, the radical words contained descriptive information on the things designated by them. For this reason, Wilkins wanted the lexicon of radical words to be much more comprehensive than Dalgarno would allow. The collaboration ended, and both Dalgarno and Wilkins pursued their own designs. Dalgarno's language resulted from a deliberate compromise between the encyclopedic, classificatory approach favoured by Wilkins on the one hand, and the analytical approach he himself valued most on the other hand. The compromise was necessary, Dalgarno believed, because neither method, if applied consistently throughout, could lead to a practicable language. Consequently, his radical words reflect an all-embracing classification scheme, but their number is limited to about 1, 000 words. All other words are to be formed by means of composition, using the radical words as elements. As for the grammar of his language, Dalgarno also resorted to a compromise. A strictly logical language, in Dalgarno's view, does not contain word classes of different types, but consists entirely of names of the primitive elements out of which our thoughts are composed. However, as such a language would be unsuitable for communication, he used various inflexions and affixes in his language that indicated different parts of speech, and he distinguished a small number of pronouns. Wilkins's philosophical language (chapter 4) has been studied more widely than Dalgarno's, partly because it is often erroneously assumed that Wilkins and Dalgarno followed the same plan, while Wilkins elaborated it in a more thorough and sophisticated manner. Just as Dalgarno, Wilkins drew up a comprehensive classification scheme, from which the words of his language were derived. However, whereas Dalgarno had deliberately restricted this method in order to be able to express as many concepts as possible by means of compounds, Wilkins carried it through much further, so that his lexicon of radical words consisted of more than 4, 000 radical words. Detailed examination of Wilkins's impressive tables leads to the conclusion that the relationship between new developments in natural science and Wilkins's language was more complicated than is often assumed. Rather than claiming his language to be suitable for the expression of scientific knowledge, he asserted that his language was modelled on the vocabulary of ordinary language users and that scientific discoveries had little bearing on this. Furthermore, it is emphasized that Wilkins made it quite clear that he was not striving for a perfect language, his goals being far less ambitious.

By contrast, Leibniz believed throughout his intellectual career that is was possible to create a language that would be an important tool for the advancement of scientific knowledge (chapter 5). Although he took the Aristotelian categories as a starting point just as Dalgarno and Wilkins had done, he proposed a thorough revision of this theory, giving more prominence to combinatorial principles than to classificatory ones. After a sketch of the logical and philosophical tenets and principles connected with Leibniz's plans, the work he carried out in order to realize his schemes is described. Leibniz studied both Dalgarno's and Wilkins's work very carefully. Although he rightly emphasized that the language he envisaged differed fundamentally from the languages constructed by his English precursors, he made use of their work in executing his own plans. The dissertation shows that various manuscripts by Leibniz that have recently been published for the first time contain extensive summaries, interspersed with commentary, of parts of Dalgarno's and Wilkins's work. It is argued that research on Leibniz's views must take the often unclear status of his manuscripts into account. Furthermore, it is shown that Leibniz's rational grammar project, which was aimed at explicating the semantics of natural language expressions so as to determine their logical structure, deserves to be further explored. The dissertation concludes with a short chapter in which the languages of Dalgarno and Wilkins are compared with one another, and the aims and principles underpinning both these languages are compared with those of Leibniz's grand but uncompleted project.

Jaap Maat writes in his: 'Dalgarno in Paris.

'This paper report on a recent discovery that in the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris there are conserved two manuscripts, each of which is concerned with one of two distinct but closely connected inventions by George Dalgarno: a universal character and an artificial language. The manuscripts are in Latin, and they were written by a visitor who probably came from Paris and who was possibly associated with the Jesuits. For the rest, we have as yet found few clues about the identity of the author, who notes that he was in Oxford in 1657, where 'a certain Scot, George Dalgerno' explained his inventions to him in English. The paper recapitulates the early history of Dalgarno's scheme, explaining why the belief was widespread that a universal writing was desirable and feasible, whereas the creation of a new universal language seemed far less attractive. Setting out to improve shorthand, Dalgarno soon decided to work simultaneously on a universal character. A little later, he started working on a spoken language. A broadsheet he published in 1657, entitled 'tables of the 'Universal Character', provides a summary of the whole plan. The Paris manuscripts contain a faithful Latin translation of the tables printed on this broadsheet, and also of parts of the accompanying text containing explanatory matter. Apart from this, there are some fragments which do not correspond to the broadsheet. For instance, the document dealing with the language exemplifies the method Dalgarno used at an initial stage for forming artificial words. Thus the Paris manuscripts enable us to fill in some of the details of the development of Dalgarno's early scheme. Further, their very existence gives additional evidence how closely knit the network of scholarly contacts regarding universal language was. Finally, the fact that there are two manuscripts, one dealing with a character, the other with a language, illustrates once more the importance of the relationship between spoken and written language for seventeenth century ideas on universal language.

As far as Dalgarno's language is concerned, this picture does not do full justice to the nature of his project. Although an ontological classification plays an important part in his design, another, equally important, aspect tends to be overlooked. In Dalgarno's view, a philosophical language enables us to express a logical analysis of our ideas. Such an analysis is distinct from, and partly opposed to, the method of reducing concepts to an overall classification.