<p>A purely <em>spoken</em> language could not be non-linear, as sounds must be expressed one after another. The only real exception to this that I can think of would be a language that must be spoken by multiple speakers simultaneously.</p>
<p>Written languages have significantly more options though, as they aren't restricted by time. The author will have to write in a certain order, but nothing has to guarantee that the reader reads in that same order. I would recommend reading <a href="https://s.ai/essays/nlf2dws" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this essay on nonlinear languages</a> and looking at <a href="https://s.ai/unlws" rel="nofollow noreferrer">UNLWS</a>, the Unker Non-Linear Writing System, which I think is an example of a nonlinear language done well.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-18T22:31:38.680Z
This work is worth a "notable mention" because it goes some steps beyond conventional writing systems. However, computer scientists have devised effective methods to transform complex graphs into linear notation as well.
Sir Cornflakes
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-02-17T22:24:11.910Z
2024-02-29T05:19:32.760Z
2024-02-29T05:19:32.760Z
nyxbird
<p>OP, I think that your question does something like the opposite of begging the question: it isn't clear what you yourself mean by what you're asking, so a cogent answer has to beg the question by characterising the properties of what it chooses to consider &quot;non-linear&quot;.</p>
<p>As nyxbird kindly noted in <a href="https://conlang.stackexchange.com/a/2099/106">their answer</a>, I've thought a fair amount and what <em>I</em> would consider a non-linear (fully 2-dimensional) language, both in the abstract and in practice, both of which they linked to. You can read my opinions about my interests there.  I would strongly suggest looking at the section of the UNLWS document which links to my own inspirations, and to the many other non-linear languages that came both before and after UNLWS. They all take somewhat different approaches, and what wit made is only one.</p>
<p>I believe that after 20 years, my views on this subject are by now somewhat famous in the conlanging community, to the point that I may well have effectively defined this concept for most conlangers. UNLWS is considered by some to be the prototypical example of a non-linear language.</p>
<p>But nobody is a unilateral authority on definitions, me included. The kind of non-linearity that interests me may not be what interests you. I always encourage people to make a fresh consideration and invention of the fundamentals.</p>
<p>I suggest that you make a new question where you first more clearly say what you mean by a &quot;non-linear language&quot;. Then people could make a coherent answer about the properties of the thing you point to. Without knowing what you want described, it's not really possible to give an answer that's about what <em>you</em> mean by it.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-09-28T11:53:55.967Z
Thank you for your feed back.
bobengineer
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-09-25T20:20:29.423Z
2024-09-25T20:20:29.423Z
Sai
<p>I'd like to argue that there is no such thing as a non-linear language. Every language needs to convey some some information from the speaker to the listener (or signer to the viewer, or using another channel at all), and that information can by represented as a stream of bits that is linear in time. I have heard of scifi writers talking about &quot;non-linear languages&quot; used by some non-human beings but no one of them provides samples or a tentative description of those non-linear languages.</p>
<p>P.S. My notion of &quot;linear&quot; is not identical to the term &quot;linear language&quot; in Theoretical Computer Science, those &quot;linear languages&quot; are a proper subset of the context-free languages (and from linguistics we know that natural languages are sometimes not context-free). In my answer I just mean &quot;being able to be represented by a linear string of symbols&quot;.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-10-31T11:02:10.923Z
Sir Cornflakes, Thanks.
bobengineer
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-10-31T15:27:34.253Z
This is mostly true for spoken languages, but what about signed languages, that can express multiple morphemes at once with none of them clearly coming "before" or "after" each other?
Draconis
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-10-31T19:43:00.673Z
Well, think of them in an analogy of a musical partitur, and the different instruments are the hands, the facial expression and the other body parts relevant for the sign language, and everything stacked vertically above each other is one letter of a sufficiently large alphabet. A little bit of abstraction also helps, not every movement in going from one sign to another is really relevant for the meaning conveyed.
Sir Cornflakes
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-09-25T20:22:24.323Z
Your answer is in my view true about temporally expressed languages, but not (in principle) about written ones.
Sai
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-09-25T20:47:21.600Z
Sure, you can linearize anything. A database of books can be alphabetized or sorted by publication date or author, but that doesn't mean it's naturally linear, just that you've expressed it in a linear form.
prosfilaes
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-10-30T16:54:23.097Z
2023-10-30T17:03:58.343Z
2023-10-30T17:03:58.343Z
Sir Cornflakes
<p>I agree with the answer by Sir Cornflakes; to phrase it in a different way: there is plenty of information that is non-linear. Thought, concepts, relationships, images, etc. But language is a code to transmit this information between people. I have an image that I want to describe to you, but I need to linearise my description, because in languages you have a temporal/sequential element in the transmission. Even German and hieroglyphs do that. There is a fixed sequential ordering when you read hieroglyphs (or Hangul for that matter, which is also two-dimensional).</p>
<p>If you want to look at an image, you cannot look at it all at once, so you need to select a sequence in which you visit the various areas of it. That is then linear again. And depending on the order, the image might have a different meaning to you, just like word order in many languages.</p>
<p>So, language being a means of communication, there has to be a linearity to it.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-10-31T11:02:55.367Z
Oliver, Thanks.
bobengineer
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-10-31T15:32:11.363Z
... "even German"? Why are we imagining German to be some special language?
Azor Ahai -him-
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-10-31T15:55:31.200Z
German is special in Oliver Mason's post because bobengineer cited it for discussion in comments under the question.
Vir
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-10-31T17:07:11.393Z
@AzorAhai-him- -- exactly! And I'm a native German speaker, so I know it's not special :)
Oliver Mason
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-10-31T17:13:45.093Z
@Vir Oh okay skimmed right past it
Azor Ahai -him-
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-11-03T09:47:42.910Z
Maybe German is not the right example...
bobengineer
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-10-31T09:33:35.663Z
2023-10-31T09:33:35.663Z
Oliver Mason
<p>What characteristics would describe a &quot;Non-Linear Language&quot;?
For instance would it use Logographs (Chinese, Egyptian, etc.)?
Or could it use IPA sound symbols?
What would make the language Non-Linear in a speech context (not written)?</p>
<p><em><strong>(update as of 2024-09-28)
Thank you all for your feed back. I don't know the appropriate way to freeze this thread... but I will not be responding to any further comments...</strong></em></p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-10-30T11:40:45.463Z
What do you mean by 'non-linear language'?
Oliver Mason
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-10-30T21:08:32.177Z
In written form it would appear as a "Hierarchical tree" -example: [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_structure) or as a "mind map" -example: [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map) ... where a thought starts but branches out into elaboration on each modifying phrase like a very large parenthesis ... The German language does this to some degree ... Also Egyptian Hieroglyphs spread out into 2 dimensional space ...
bobengineer
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-10-30T21:10:41.493Z
I'm not sure how one would be able to do this verbally ...
bobengineer
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-10-30T22:14:30.483Z
@bobengineer Well, in a certain sense, language does work like that! Words form noun and verb phrases together, those make sentences, and the sentences might themselves be subordinate to other phrases. [This](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branching_(linguistics)) article might be an introduction to the concept.
Cecilia
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-10-31T11:00:55.987Z
Cecilia, Thanks for your thoughts.
bobengineer
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-10-31T17:08:20.483Z
@Cecilia This is only a hypothesised internal structure, though; it is not actually present in the language itself.
Oliver Mason
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-09-28T21:24:42.297Z
This is not a discussion forum but a question and answer site. You can mark one answer as accepted, this is kind of a closing signal of your side, but this does not prevent new answers from coming in. It is not necessary that you watch your question forever, but it it will be here forever (or at least as long as this site exists).
Sir Cornflakes
<typology>
What are the characteristics of "Non-Linear Language"?
# What are the characteristics of "Non-Linear Language"?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2023-10-30)

What characteristics would describe a "Non-Linear Language"?
For instance would it use Logographs (Chinese, Egyptian, etc.)?
Or could it use IPA sound symbols?
What would make the language Non-Linear in a speech context (not written)?

***(update as of 2024-09-28)
Thank you all for your feed back. I don't know the appropriate way to freeze this thread... but I will not be responding to any further comments...***

**Tags:** typology
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: What do you mean by 'non-linear language'?  
> **username_0**: In written form it would appear as a "Hierarchical tree" -example: [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_structure) or as a "mind map" -example: [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map) ... where a thought starts but branches out into elaboration on each modifying phrase like a very large parenthesis ... The German language does this to some degree ... Also Egyptian Hieroglyphs spread out into 2 dimensional space ...  
> **username_0**: I'm not sure how one would be able to do this verbally ...  
> **username_2**: @bobengineer Well, in a certain sense, language does work like that! Words form noun and verb phrases together, those make sentences, and the sentences might themselves be subordinate to other phrases. [This](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branching_(linguistics)) article might be an introduction to the concept.  
> **username_0**: Cecilia, Thanks for your thoughts.  
> **username_1**: @Cecilia This is only a hypothesised internal structure, though; it is not actually present in the language itself.  
> **username_3**: This is not a discussion forum but a question and answer site. You can mark one answer as accepted, this is kind of a closing signal of your side, but this does not prevent new answers from coming in. It is not necessary that you watch your question forever, but it it will be here forever (or at least as long as this site exists).  

---

## 4 answers

### Answer by username_4 on 2024-02-17. Score: 3

A purely *spoken* language could not be non-linear, as sounds must be expressed one after another. The only real exception to this that I can think of would be a language that must be spoken by multiple speakers simultaneously.

Written languages have significantly more options though, as they aren't restricted by time. The author will have to write in a certain order, but nothing has to guarantee that the reader reads in that same order. I would recommend reading [this essay on nonlinear languages](https://s.ai/essays/nlf2dws) and looking at [UNLWS](https://s.ai/unlws), the Unker Non-Linear Writing System, which I think is an example of a nonlinear language done well.

> **Comments:**
> **username_3**: This work is worth a "notable mention" because it goes some steps beyond conventional writing systems. However, computer scientists have devised effective methods to transform complex graphs into linear notation as well.  

---

### Answer by username_5 on 2024-09-25. Score: 1

OP, I think that your question does something like the opposite of begging the question: it isn't clear what you yourself mean by what you're asking, so a cogent answer has to beg the question by characterising the properties of what it chooses to consider "non-linear".

As nyxbird kindly noted in [their answer](https://conlang.stackexchange.com/a/2099/106), I've thought a fair amount and what *I* would consider a non-linear (fully 2-dimensional) language, both in the abstract and in practice, both of which they linked to. You can read my opinions about my interests there. I would strongly suggest looking at the section of the UNLWS document which links to my own inspirations, and to the many other non-linear languages that came both before and after UNLWS. They all take somewhat different approaches, and what wit made is only one.

I believe that after 20 years, my views on this subject are by now somewhat famous in the conlanging community, to the point that I may well have effectively defined this concept for most conlangers. UNLWS is considered by some to be the prototypical example of a non-linear language.

But nobody is a unilateral authority on definitions, me included. The kind of non-linearity that interests me may not be what interests you. I always encourage people to make a fresh consideration and invention of the fundamentals.

I suggest that you make a new question where you first more clearly say what you mean by a "non-linear language". Then people could make a coherent answer about the properties of the thing you point to. Without knowing what you want described, it's not really possible to give an answer that's about what *you* mean by it.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Thank you for your feed back.  

---

### Answer by username_3 on 2023-10-30. Score: 1

I'd like to argue that there is no such thing as a non-linear language. Every language needs to convey some some information from the speaker to the listener (or signer to the viewer, or using another channel at all), and that information can by represented as a stream of bits that is linear in time. I have heard of scifi writers talking about "non-linear languages" used by some non-human beings but no one of them provides samples or a tentative description of those non-linear languages.

P.S. My notion of "linear" is not identical to the term "linear language" in Theoretical Computer Science, those "linear languages" are a proper subset of the context-free languages (and from linguistics we know that natural languages are sometimes not context-free). In my answer I just mean "being able to be represented by a linear string of symbols".

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Sir Cornflakes, Thanks.  
> **username_6**: This is mostly true for spoken languages, but what about signed languages, that can express multiple morphemes at once with none of them clearly coming "before" or "after" each other?  
> **username_3**: Well, think of them in an analogy of a musical partitur, and the different instruments are the hands, the facial expression and the other body parts relevant for the sign language, and everything stacked vertically above each other is one letter of a sufficiently large alphabet. A little bit of abstraction also helps, not every movement in going from one sign to another is really relevant for the meaning conveyed.  
> **username_5**: Your answer is in my view true about temporally expressed languages, but not (in principle) about written ones.  
> **username_7**: Sure, you can linearize anything. A database of books can be alphabetized or sorted by publication date or author, but that doesn't mean it's naturally linear, just that you've expressed it in a linear form.  

---

### Answer by username_1 on 2023-10-31. Score: 1

I agree with the answer by Sir Cornflakes; to phrase it in a different way: there is plenty of information that is non-linear. Thought, concepts, relationships, images, etc. But language is a code to transmit this information between people. I have an image that I want to describe to you, but I need to linearise my description, because in languages you have a temporal/sequential element in the transmission. Even German and hieroglyphs do that. There is a fixed sequential ordering when you read hieroglyphs (or Hangul for that matter, which is also two-dimensional).

If you want to look at an image, you cannot look at it all at once, so you need to select a sequence in which you visit the various areas of it. That is then linear again. And depending on the order, the image might have a different meaning to you, just like word order in many languages.

So, language being a means of communication, there has to be a linearity to it.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Oliver, Thanks.  
> **username_8**: ... "even German"? Why are we imagining German to be some special language?  
> **username_9**: German is special in Oliver Mason's post because bobengineer cited it for discussion in comments under the question.  
> **username_1**: @AzorAhai-him- -- exactly! And I'm a native German speaker, so I know it's not special :)  
> **username_8**: @Vir Oh okay skimmed right past it  
> **username_0**: Maybe German is not the right example...  

---

