<p>Original <a href="https://www.frathwiki.com/Fith" rel="noreferrer">Fith</a> is a stack-based conlang (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_(abstract_data_type)" rel="noreferrer">LIFO</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation" rel="noreferrer">reverse polish notation</a>) and considered to be unspeakable in real-time since in order to speak good Fith you need to be able to remember more parts and recurse deeper than what is practically possible for a human. It also has a full set stack operators like "swap the order of the two last stack items" and *rotate the top three stack items".</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-04-06T21:25:27.313Z
2018-04-06T21:25:27.313Z
kaleissin
<p>I've seen a <a href="http://ling.umd.edu/labs/acquisition/papers/HunterLidz2012_offprint.pdf" rel="noreferrer">paper</a> that children have a lot of trouble learning nonconservative determiners.</p>

<p>For instance, "every" is a conservative determiner because <code>every dog is brown</code> is equivalent to <code>every dog is a brown dog</code> – objects that are brown but not a dog don't count toward the truth of the sentence. In contrast, if we define <code>equi dogs are brown</code> as "the number of dogs is equal to the number of brown objects", then <code>equi</code> would be nonconservative because the sentence above is different from <code>equi dogs are brown dogs</code>.</p>

<p>(Interestingly, my conlang Jbl has nonconservative determiners; for instance, <em>glsh</em> is the <em>equi</em> mentioned above.)</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-25T10:42:20.257Z
2018-03-25T14:36:02.653Z
2018-03-25T14:36:02.653Z
bb94
<p>If you search for the researchers mentioned in the article, you can find some of their research papers. In those, they describe their methodology. In <a href="http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~kjohnson/readings/Hudson_Kam_Newport_2005%20copy.pdf" rel="noreferrer">one paper that I looked at briefly</a>, for example, they mention that they varied the consistency by making the placement of determiners random. (This is actually also mentioned in the Motherboard article).</p>

<p>Their research seems to be focused on finding out how children can learn languages, and what universal features of languages there are, so they up the difficulty of their experimental mini-languages by using rare elements, such as OSV word order (most (Western) languages use SVO). Discovery that some mini-languages are unlearnable is thus a side-effect of pushing the limits as to what are possible human languages. From a cursory glance at several papers I'd think that you can make a language 'unlearnable' if you add some random variation and choose a lot of rare grammatical features.</p>

<p>PS: in the Motherboard article they actually give a reason why no documentation of Sillyspeak is available: they want to avoid it 'escaping' into the wild, as its purpose is to be a completely unknown language to the subjects of the experiments.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-19T09:57:35.857Z
2018-03-19T09:57:35.857Z
Oliver Mason
<p>In <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qkvabx/sillyspeak-the-art-of-making-a-fake-language" rel="noreferrer">this article about miniature artificial languages on motherboard.com</a> experiments are described where children learn carafully designed miniature artificial languages. It is also said that children give up on learning "unlearnable" languages. A mentioned miniature artificial language is named "Sillyspeak" or "Sillysprochen".</p>

<p>What features of languages make them unlearnable? Is the full documentation of Sillyspeak available?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-19T19:03:33.143Z
Possibly not about conlangs, but better in Linguistics SE, as the answer sought for is about language acquisition, which falls into the domain of linguistics more than conlangs.
Duncan
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-19T21:09:56.420Z
Indeed I can ask it over there, too. But I wanted to introduce the concept of *miniature artificial languages* here, and this site also lacks question activity.
Sir Cornflakes
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-04-07T01:46:46.393Z
Fair enough. Such invented languages are often referred to as "experimental languages", and Sillyspeak seems to be just such a thing!
elemtilas
<unnatural-features><miniature-artificial-languages><language-acquisition>
Features of unlearnable languages
# Features of unlearnable languages

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-03-19)

In [this article about miniature artificial languages on motherboard.com](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qkvabx/sillyspeak-the-art-of-making-a-fake-language) experiments are described where children learn carafully designed miniature artificial languages. It is also said that children give up on learning "unlearnable" languages. A mentioned miniature artificial language is named "Sillyspeak" or "Sillysprochen".

What features of languages make them unlearnable? Is the full documentation of Sillyspeak available?

**Tags:** unnatural-features, miniature-artificial-languages, language-acquisition
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Possibly not about conlangs, but better in Linguistics SE, as the answer sought for is about language acquisition, which falls into the domain of linguistics more than conlangs.  
> **username_0**: Indeed I can ask it over there, too. But I wanted to introduce the concept of *miniature artificial languages* here, and this site also lacks question activity.  
> **username_2**: Fair enough. Such invented languages are often referred to as "experimental languages", and Sillyspeak seems to be just such a thing!  

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## 3 answers

### Answer by username_5 on 2018-03-19. Score: 9 | Accepted answer

If you search for the researchers mentioned in the article, you can find some of their research papers. In those, they describe their methodology. In [one paper that I looked at briefly](http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~kjohnson/readings/Hudson_Kam_Newport_2005%20copy.pdf), for example, they mention that they varied the consistency by making the placement of determiners random. (This is actually also mentioned in the Motherboard article).

Their research seems to be focused on finding out how children can learn languages, and what universal features of languages there are, so they up the difficulty of their experimental mini-languages by using rare elements, such as OSV word order (most (Western) languages use SVO). Discovery that some mini-languages are unlearnable is thus a side-effect of pushing the limits as to what are possible human languages. From a cursory glance at several papers I'd think that you can make a language 'unlearnable' if you add some random variation and choose a lot of rare grammatical features.

PS: in the Motherboard article they actually give a reason why no documentation of Sillyspeak is available: they want to avoid it 'escaping' into the wild, as its purpose is to be a completely unknown language to the subjects of the experiments.


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### Answer by username_3 on 2018-04-06. Score: 8

Original [Fith](https://www.frathwiki.com/Fith) is a stack-based conlang ([LIFO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_(abstract_data_type)), [reverse polish notation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation)) and considered to be unspeakable in real-time since in order to speak good Fith you need to be able to remember more parts and recurse deeper than what is practically possible for a human. It also has a full set stack operators like "swap the order of the two last stack items" and \*rotate the top three stack items".


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### Answer by username_4 on 2018-03-25. Score: 7

I've seen a [paper](http://ling.umd.edu/labs/acquisition/papers/HunterLidz2012_offprint.pdf) that children have a lot of trouble learning nonconservative determiners.

For instance, "every" is a conservative determiner because `every dog is brown` is equivalent to `every dog is a brown dog` – objects that are brown but not a dog don't count toward the truth of the sentence. In contrast, if we define `equi dogs are brown` as "the number of dogs is equal to the number of brown objects", then `equi` would be nonconservative because the sentence above is different from `equi dogs are brown dogs`.

(Interestingly, my conlang Jbl has nonconservative determiners; for instance, *glsh* is the *equi* mentioned above.)


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