ABSTRACT

Artificial human languages are frequently invented. Inventing a systematic and stable language no doubt takes time and effort, but it isn’t especially difficult — as Reid puts it, ‘there is no great ingenuity required’— for a group of humans to fairly quickly settle on a stable and extensible set of signs for the purposes of communicating among themselves. This is true even if they are complete strangers who initially don’t share a single artificial sign in common. The best explanation for the relative easewithwhich suchhumans can invent anartificial language is that they share a natural languagewhich they can readily implement to agree onmeanings for artificial signs. For example, pointing to something and saying ‘apple’ in a clear, steady voice and then proceeding to do the same with several other objects that superficially resemble thefirst is anespecially effectiveway toget a groupofhumans to understand that you’re using ‘apple’ to refer to things of that kind.