Foundations of Language
By
Joseph M. Brown
Basic Research Press

This book is still being compiled, and is unavailable for purchase, however, you may be interested in seeing part of the completed work

Preface
     This book Foundations of Language sets forth the ultimate foundations of a unified theory of science. If, and when, an encyclopedia of unified science were completed this book would be volume number one.
     This book begins with a presentation of written signs which correspond to the human physiological configurations utilized for making the sounds (i.e., verbal signs) of language. These configurations consist of the lungs (exhalation air), the voice box (glottis) vibrating or non-vibrating, the air channels (pharynx, mouth, and nose), the uvula and vilum, the tongue, hard palate, teeth, and lips. The time phased locations of the moving parts of the voice systems. Produce the articulation which results in the various sound (symbols) of language. Part A of the book Phonetics presents the verbal and written signs of language.
     Part B of the book, “Semantics,” presents the correspondence of the signs of language with their “meaning” one of the most basic meanings is the correspondence of positive integers to the “manyness” of physical objects. For example the number 2 names the manyness of pairs. The fundamental tenants of set theory, logic, mathematics, geometry, and physics are presented in part B.
     Part A (phonetics) shows how to position the mouth, lips, and tongue and how to actuate the vocal chords to produce the sounds identified by the International Phonetic Association as those most used for human communication. The symbols used by the English language are listed first. This is followed by the symbols used in Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, then Arabic. The next section gives the alphabets used by the six different languages along with words illustrating the use of the sounds. For Chinese the recently introduced pinyin alphabet is used. This is followed by translations into the five languages of the words used in Part B of this book. These translations should provide the majority of the literate people in the world with the ability to pronounce the words in Part B.
     The Foundations of Language text lays out the basic foundations of language, and as it turns out, the foundations of mathematics and the foundations of physics also. The material is written in such a manner that any intelligent person from anywhere on the earth should be able to read and understand the text.
     The first section of the text presents the most basic conventions of English grammar such as reading a book from front to back and reading a page left to right and top to bottom. The text begins by naming quantities and the quantities initially are just quantities of balls. We further restrict the text initially to just quantities of balls. We further restrict the text initially to dealing with the ten digits. The logic then is developed for discourse on quantities up to nine balls. With this language machinery we then develop the positive integers. Next we develop the basis for the postulates of geometry. We show physically how to develop the concept of a straight line using balls and the mathematical foundations developed in the preceding chapters. The concepts of points, (flat) planes, and solids are developed. Finally, the concepts of mass, displacement, time, velocity, and changes of velocity are developed.
     Previous works, Principles of Science, Joseph M. Brown, ISBN 0-962676-0-2, Basic Research Press, Starkville, MS, 1991 and Fundamentals of Physics, Joseph M. Brown, ISBN 0-9626768-1-0, Basic Research Press, Starkville, MS 1999 show, in outline form, how the foundations of language and mathematics couples to the foundations of mechanics.
     The number of balls is “mass” (where a proportionality constant is used), and volumes are described by number of ball diameter lengths, widths, and heights. The amazing thing about the language for describing numbers of balls and the development of mathematics is accomplished by using (actually postulating) just a few simple words to name objects and to name operations for combining and separating objects.
     We next note the utter simplicity of language and its immediate and direct connection with physical entities. It is almost inconceivable that the language and resulting mathematics could be “inconsistent”. It would seem that the physics of kinetic particles would have to have inconsistencies in order for the language of mathematics presented here to have inconsistencies.
     Notwithstanding all the positive things we have said (and believe) in the above 6 paragraphs, there are major deficiencies in the development. The ultimate goal is to select a minimum number of postulate words and then define all new words in terms of these postulated words. We have not done that. However, we have indicated how it can be done. We leave that as a project for some future researcher.