COML6177 - The Quest for a Universal Language

This seminar is an exploration in European intellectual history. It traces the historical trajectory, from antiquity to the present day, of the idea that there once was, and again could be, a universal and perfect language among humanity. The tantalizing question of the possibility of such a language has been a vital and thought-provoking inquiry throughout human history. If recovered or invented, such a language has the potential to explain the origins, physical reality, and meaning of human experience, fostering universal understanding and world peace. Greek philosophers grappled with the capacity of names to correctly denote things. In Judaic and Christian traditions, the notion that the language spoken by Adam and Eve perfectly expressed the nature of the physical and metaphysical world captivated the minds of intellectuals for nearly two millennia. In defiance of the biblical myth of the confusion of languages and peoples at the Tower of Babel, they persistently endeavored to overcome divine punishment and rediscover the path to harmonious life. In the 19th century, Indo-Europeanist philologists perceived an avenue to explore the early stages of human development by reconstructing a proto-language. In the 20th century, romantic idealists like the inventor of Esperanto, Ludwik Zamenhof, constructed languages to further understanding among estranged nations. For writers and poets of all times, from Cyrano de Bergerac to Velimir Khlebnikov, the concept of a universal and perfect language has served as an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Today, this idea reverberates in theories of universal and generative grammars, in the approach to English as a global language, and in various attempts to devise artificial languages, including those intended for cosmic communication.
Each week, we examine a particular period and a set of theories to explore universal language projects. But above all, at the core of the course lies an examination of what language is and how it is used in human society.