[iucg] Intersem: 470 years of experimentation

[jefsey <jefsey at jefsey.com>]

http://iucg.org/wiki/French:_470_years_of_experience_for_the_Intersem

French: 470 years of experience for the Intersem

It was 470 years ago today that King Francois
the First signed the ordnance of Villers-Cotterets. This ordnance
removed the French judiciary system from any Church jurisdiction and
ended the use of Latin in legal public decisions. This was the birth of
the French modern language, through its assignment as the language of
French law in a lingually diversified Kingdom.

The difference

This is the basic difference between
French and every other language. In every language there is a common
referent in the background that is never stated, but is constantly
present. In French, as a legal language, this referent comes with an
impressive "built-in" metalanguage in some kind of intelligent
(as in inter-legere, inter-linked) overlay that is shaped by the
influence of the Law, methodically structuring the grammar
as well as rules, usages, social agreements, common thinking, knowledge,
culture and cultural values that every other human community usually
builds from a rough consensus.

A progressive exploration

Various authors (Du Bellay,
Descartes, and Pascal actually tested whether it was possible to use the
language of the Law for poetry, science, philosophy, etc.). This also
clearly explains the raison d'etre of the French Academy, which is
not actually to protect the language, but rather to protect the citizens
by protecting the clarity of the law as described by a language, which
must be kept equal, logical, and reasonably exciting for everyone, from
generation to generation. This is the job of academicians who, for that
reason, have been dubbed as "Immortals" (719 to this date),
because the Law has to be immortal, as the rules of Justice are carved in
the stone, and in this way are also carved in the national language.
Revolution gave to the Law the care of the language of the Law, but
Napoleon returned it to the expertise of the academicians and made them
stabilize and document it. This was more efficient, but less democratic:
the first SSDO [specialised standard documentation organisation].

Intrinsic equality

This protection of the people by the
defense of the languages of the Law of the people is the very basis of a
"people centric" society, such as the one found in the
unanimous declaration at the World Summit on the Information
Society, which described the want for the Internet to support such. This
is the motivation for the france at large team that is participating in the
IETF linguistic WGs; an equal for all linguistic support of equal
languages.

Technical contribution

Technically, the interest in this
experiment results from the fact that it worked. This meant that
one can introduce an active referent system as a part of the more passive
grammatical system. If one considers that the common referent of a
relational space makes the semantics of its language, and that its
various contexts make its pragmatics diversity, this would mean that
Francois the First was able to port a large and key pragmatic referent
into the language semantic references (grammar, syntax, and vocabulary).

We know his way rather well: the new references were well structured
(Legal system). We do not know if other approaches would have worked,
since that respective case was unique. However, we also know that this
trains French speakers in their "metaductive" form of thinking,
by first understanding how the world is and then "boringly"
striving to make it "French" i.e. equal, logical, and
reasonably exciting for everyone. 

One could, in some way (which Kant implied), oppose this with the
Descartes' Method 4th rule: limited human methodical considerations come
second after a global vision (this is precisely what we are trying to
address via research [such as "Complex" or
"Intelligent" thinking and "epistemology" (in the
French school meaning)] towards a networked consideration of
reality).

An inspiration for innovation

This introduction of the
legal language in the language itself, with all its logical implications
and constraints, is very similar to the problem that we are facing, which
is to make natural languages and mecalanguages [natural language
support by machines] (the first issue being IDNA) converge. Metaductive
thinking is what registries and metadata networks permit (JTC1/WG2/SC32,
ISO 11179): it is the most probable support of mecalanguages. 

However, it took French a few centuries; we do not have that kind of time
- but we do have French as an experimental basis for the job at hand: the
Intersem, the multilingual and semantic Internet.