IS THERE ANYTHING SPECIAL ABOUT GLOSA AS A CANDIDATE FOR ADOPTION AS THE IAL?

• Glosa has grown out of the work done by Professor Lancelot Hogben, who developed and published "Interglossa." This continuation of the project by Clark and Ashby was authorised by Hogben.
• In its inception, the authors selected the best characteristics of the various national languages, and melded them into a comprehensive whole.
• The pattern has been developed and fine-tuned over twenty years, so that, now, it has been de-bugged, is standardised, and has virtually no exceptions to the operation of its minimalist set of grammatical rules.
• The `discovery' of syntax-based grammar by Clark and Ashby is a definite advantage over the grammar of the parent, Interglossa, and the number of small changes made, mainly during the decade 1981-92, have turned Glosa into a distinct language of its own.
• Because Glosa's grammatical pattern is so standardised, the authors chose to publish the language without an accompanying Grammar Book. This method of publishing the language has been successful,and proves the fundamental soundness of the language. However, some short tutorials demonstrating the grammar, in action, have proved beneficial.
• Owing to Glosa's recency of design, the latest developments in Linguistic thinking have been taken into account during its formation.
• Also, because Glosa's design post-dates that of computers, the basic requirements of programming, in relation to parser-writing, have been incorporated - without detriment to the speaking or writing of the language.
• From investigation into the symbolic representation of ideas in a "meaning representation system," it would seem that the short, concept/ words of Glosa would serve very well as a means of holding and transferring information in symbolic form - in this case with the symbols in the form of inspectable ... and, probably, readable ... words.
• Glosa would make a very suitable meta-language for use in tourist information kiosks, this would represent an ideal marrying of IAL and AI technologies.
• Feedback from China and Africa suggest that the Glosa structure "feels" comfortable. There is a distinct possibility that Glosa has turned out to be fairly close to the "universal grammar," hypothesised by Chomsky and other recent researchers, as an extension of the language ability that is already *hard-wired* into our brains, at birth.
• Glosa has the subtlety to convey fine shades of meaning, and sections of English literature that have proved very difficult to translate into other European languages, have satisfactorily been translated into Glosa.

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