The Xextan GitHub organization is a small but vibrant community of people interested in building tools and applications related to Xextan. But first...
Xextan is a compact logical language designed to maximize simplicity and ease of learning. For those unfamiliar, a logical language, or loglang for short, is a constructed human language designed to have these specific traits:
- Unambiguous syntax and machine parsability
- Self-segregating Morphology; Words can never run together
Many loglangs, to varying degrees, also adhere to the the following principles:
- Logical consistency, such that any given statement has a single underlying logical framework
- Monosemy; Each word has only one definition, even if broad
Examples of other loglangs include Loglan, Lojban, Guaspi, and Toaq.
Something important for newcomers to note is that while loglang designers strive to eleminate syntactic ambiguity, it's most likely not possible to eliminate all semantic ambiguity.
Some notable characteristics of Xextan include:
- Core vocabulary of 500 possible roots and ~100 particles
- Monosyllabic roots with simple, modular compounding behavior
- Lexicon derived from a wide variety of natural and constructed languages, with significant contributors including Portuguese, Czech, Mandarin, Albanian, Japanese, Zulu, Lojban/Loglan and more
- Unified system for names and loanwords
- SSM based on pitch accent
- Serial predicates with predictable semantics based on predicate class
- All subordinate clause constructs come in auto-terminating ("short scope") and explicitly terminated ("long scope") varieties
- Implicit typecasting ("transmogrification") of most grammatical constructs allows doing more with less
- Simple prefix-based case system allows for highly flexible word order (default: VSO)
- Orthography and aesthetic inspired by Brazilian Portuguese and Basque
- General design loosely inspired by Rex May's Ceqli with additional influence from Toaq
- Designed to facilitate rhymes and various metrical patterns for poetry and songwriting
- Cute and mini
If you have an interest in language engineering for artistic purposes, Xextan is the language for you. While its design goals differ drastically from its predecessors, Xextan nonetheless attempts to address some of the problems observed in earlier logical languages, particularly with respect to conciseness and semantic density. As with many features of the language, this is intended to maximize the practical utility of Xextan as a language built first and foremost for artistic expression.
Make no mistake, however: Xextan does not hold itself out as some kind of grand and noble foray testing the limits of human cognition. Rather, it is merely intended to serve as an example of an alternative approach to language engineering, achieving the same benefits of unambiguous syntax through a more naturalistic and intuitive framework.
Sure! Most Xextan activity occurs on the Xextan Discord server, which is where you can ask questions directly, as well as submit new words to be included in the Xextan dictionary. Click below for an invite to the Xextan Discord server! https://discord.gg/4Wz7EeQJ2g