Essays on Language Design

by Rick Morneau

Here is a brief summary of essays that I've written over the past several years about the design of artificial or 'constructed' languages.  Do not confuse artificial languages (henceforth ALs, also called 'conlangs') with computer programming languages.  Although my approach to language design is formal, the languages that I discuss are intended to be used by people to communicate with each other.  In some of the essays, I also discuss how to design these languages so that they are 'computer-tractable'; that is, languages that can be used by people, but which can also be used to communicate easily and accurately with computers.



[By the way, if you plan to read or skim through all of the following essays, then I suggest that you do so in the order given, since some of the essays presume familiarity with the material discussed in earlier ones.]


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