Lincos (artificial language)
| Lincos | |
|---|---|
| Created by | Hans Freudenthal |
| Date | 1960 |
| Setting and usage | search for extraterrestrial intelligence |
| Purpose | |
| Sources | a priori |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 |
None (mis) |
| Glottolog | None |
Lincos (an abbreviation of the Latin phrase lingua cosmica) is a constructed language first described in 1960 by Dr. Hans Freudenthal in his book Lincos: Design of a Language for Cosmic Intercourse, Part 1. It is a language designed to be understandable by any possible intelligent extraterrestrial life form, for use in interstellar radio transmissions. Freudenthal considered that such a language should be easily understood by beings not acquainted with any Earthling syntax or language. Lincos was designed to be capable of encapsulating "the whole bulk of our knowledge."
The Lincos "dictionary" is intended to be transmitted first before any additional messages. It teaches natural numbers by a series of repeated pulses, separated by pauses. It then teaches >, <, =, +, -, by examples such as . . . . . > . . . There would need to be more pause than he shows around > to show an alien that > is a new separate symbol. Otherwise the alien can think the whole pattern is a new symbol of unknown meaning. Having introduced =, he shows binary notation for numbers . = 1, . . = 10 and so on. He goes on to multiplication, division, variables and constants, then propositional logic, set theory and first-order logic. He tries to introduce questions by leaving mathematical expressions unsolved: ? x x + 101 = 11
The next section of the Lincos dictionary introduces a word for second, "Sec," by playing pulses of various lengths, followed by Sec, and the number of seconds, "until the receiver may be expected to remark that the numbers... are proportional to the durations," thus teaching both that Sec is a unit of time, and exactly how long it is. He then introduces means for measuring durations, referring to moments in time, and talking about past and future events.
The third section is perhaps the most complex, and attempts to convey the concepts and language necessary to describe behavior and conversation between individuals. It uses examples to introduce actors speaking to each other, asking questions, disapproving, quoting other people, knowing and wanting things, promising, and playing. The first steps (since he has introduced sets of numbers and questions) are to introduce some new symbols (distinctive patterns of pulses), say they are NOT numbers, and transmit sequences showing two of these new symbols separated by the word "Inq," and followed by a question about an equation, then the symbols reversed, followed by the answer (example below). He expects that after many repetitions, the recipient will decide these new symbols are entities asking and answering the questions, rather than some other context for the questions.
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