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Draft:UNLWS

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The Unker Non-Linear Writing System, often shortened as UNLWS (/ˈʊnɪlvs/), is an engineered language developed by Alex Fink & Sai.[1][2][3] Partially inspired by Heptapod B from Story of Your Life, it consists only of a semasiographic writing system, with no spoken form. One of its unique features is its non-linearity[4], designed to be truly 2-dimensional as opposed to most languages, which are fundamentally one-dimensional.[5]

A picture of handwritten UNLWS text, roughly translatable as: "I, the writer, intend to [[wikt:grok|grok]] the language this message is written in." or more simply, "I intend to deeply understand UNLWS."
This UNLWS text is roughly translatable as: "I, the writer, intend to grok the language this message is written in." or more simply, "I intend to deeply understand UNLWS."
A text in UNLWS that means "A cat I am co-located with is more loved than a cat I am not co-located with" or more simply, "I love a cat I am next to more than a cat I am not next to".
This text means "A cat I am co located with is more loved than a cat I am not co located with" or more simply, "I love a cat I am next to more than a cat I am not next to". Note the commonality of the "I" glyph with the previous image, which looks similar to the numeral 4.

Naming

"Unker" is the Early Middle English form of the (now unused) dual possessive pronoun, meaning "both of our", in this case referring to Alex Fink & Sai, the creators. Non-linear follows from the language's innate structure. While "Writing System" is part of the name, it is a full-fledged language in itself and not simply a script.

Basic Structure

Each piece of text in UNLWS is a combination of glyphs and their connections via binding points, which are essentially one or more predicates.[6] This means it can be thought of as a fundamentally verb-less language. [3]

By default, every relation in UNLWS is realis, with ways to specially indicated irrealis relations.[7]

Recursion is possible with the help of stacks, which behave as if connecting to the same glyph on two different parallel levels.[8]

Tense

UNLWS includes tense and aspect markers, but they are completely optional, making it one of the rare languages where a message can truly be independent of tense.

David J. Petersen (who worked on fleshing out Dothraki and High Valyrian for the Game of Thrones TV series) said of the language:

"Certainly the most famous example of [a conlang not governed by time] is the Unker Non-Linear Writing System (UNLWS) created by Sai and Alex Fink, but it’s far from an abstract or surreal conlang. Rather, it’s a sincere attempt to create a fully functional and useable language that takes full advantage of a 2D space."[1]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "A Surreal Conlang, page 18" (PDF).
  2. ^ Advanced Language Construction. p. 59.
  3. ^ a b "How To Not Verb, page 18" (PDF).
  4. ^ "Are Languages Alive? - Dr. William Edward Hahn, Subhosit Ray PhD, Misha Klopukh".
  5. ^ "The Conlang Atlas of Language Structures".
  6. ^ Advanced Language Construction. p. 60.
  7. ^ "Sai's website detailing the grammar and structure of UNLWS".
  8. ^ Advanced Language Construction. p. 61,62.
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