Abstract

I defend the view that natural languages are artifacts, made and kept in existence by large groups of people through a process of what I call “curatorial creation.” Drawing on a theory of artifacts as the impositions of mind onto matter, a theory I have developed elsewhere, and making use of the examples of explicitly artifactual languages such as Esperanto and Volapük, I attempt to draw out, and render plausible, the idea that even natural languages can be seen as artifacts.