Latino Sine Flexione - Criticism

Criticism

Peano formally defended the maxim that the best grammar is no grammar, bearing in mind the example of Chinese. But Peano’s Interlingua still shares a major flaw with many other auxiliary languages according to Lancelot Hogben, namely having either too much grammar of the wrong sort, or not enough of the right (p. 10). Hogben argues that at least nouns and verbs should be easily distinguished by characteristic endings, so that we can easily get an initial understanding of the sentence. Thus, in Peano’s Interlingua the verbs might be given some specific, standardized verbal form, such as the infinitive, which is sufficient at the Latin indirect speech. Instead, the raw imperative is proposed in De Latino Sine Flexione:

Lingua latino habet discurso directo, ut: “Amicitia inter malos esse non potest”, et discurso indirecto: “(Verum est ) amicitiam inter malos esse non posse”. Si nos utimur semper de discurso indirecto, in verbo evanescit desinentia de persona, de modo, et saepe de tempore. Sumimus ergo nomen inflexibile (…), sub forma magis simplice, qui es imperativo.
The Latin language has a direct discourse, like: “Friendness among the bad ones is not possible”, and indirect discourse: “(It is true that ) friendness among the bad ones is not possible”. If we always make use of indirect discourse, the desinences of person, mode, and (frequently) time, get vanished off the verb. So we take the name unflexed (…), under the simplest form, which is the imperative.

— Peano (1903, § 4)

According to Hogben, another handicap is the lack of a pure article, which might clearly indicate the nouns. Nevertheless, Peano occasionally suggested that illo (that) and uno (one) might be used as articles.

Once more according to Hogben, the syntax of Peano’s Interlingua remained conservative:

(...) has an aristocratic indifference to the necessity for simple rules of sentence-construction. The fact is that no pioneer of language-planning –least of all Peano– has undertaken the task of investigating what rules of word-order contribute most to intrinsic clarity of meaning and ease of recognition.

— Lancelot Hogben (1943, p. 11).

Reviewing the list of more widely known Latin titles, one might conclude that the sequence noun-adjective is the norm in Latin, yet the inverted sequence is also current. The ratio is over 2 to 1 in a list of Latin titles commented by Stroh. E.g. “Principia Mathematica”. As for a sequence nominative-genitive, it may be the norm in Latin in a similar ratio. E.g. “Systema Naturae”. Indeed, the sequence nominative-genitive must always be the norm in Peano’s Interlingua, since the preposition de must introduce the genitive. Thus, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica would turn into Principio Mathematico de Philosophia Naturale. Since the function of both the adjective and the genitive is often the same, one might infer that the sequence noun-adjective might always be the norm.

Adiectivo qui deriva ab sustantivo vale genitivo: "aureo", "de auro".
An adjective derived from a substantive is equivalent to a genitive: "golden", "of gold".

— Peano (1903, § 6).