Emoji Language Reference Grammar

Contents

• 1 Introduction
  • 1.1 Goals
  • 1.2 Challenges
    • 1.2.1 Abstract emoji
    • 1.2.2 Ambiguous emoji
    • 1.2.3 Rejected emoji
    • 1.2.4 "Twin" emoji
  • 1.3 Foundation
• 2 Phonology
  • 2.1 Spelling Emoji Language
• 3 Writing system
  • 3.1 Spacing
  • 3.2 Punctuation
  • 3.3 Digital input
• 4 Morphology
  • 4.1 Nouns
    • 4.1.1 Number
    • 4.1.2 Possession
    • 4.1.3 Demonstrativeness
    • 4.1.4 Locative prefixes
    • 4.1.5 Instrumental prefix
    • 4.1.6 Benefactive prefix
    • 4.1.7 Equative prefix
    • 4.1.8 Compound nouns
  • 4.2 Pronouns
    • 4.2.1 Personal pronouns
    • 4.2.2 Demonstrative pronouns
    • 4.2.3 Reflexive pronouns
  • 4.3 Verbs
    • 4.3.1 Tense
    • 4.3.2 Mood
    • 4.3.3 Negation
  • 4.4 Adjectives/Adverbs
  • 4.5 Numerals
  • 4.6 Comparison
    • 4.6.1 Comparing adjectives
    • 4.6.2 Comparing adverbs
    • 4.6.3 Comparing verb phrases
• 5 Syntax
  • 5.1 Basic statements
  • 5.2 Place, manner and time
  • 5.3 Verbal adjunct fronting
  • 5.4 Yes-no questions
  • 5.5 Wh-questions
  • 5.6 Imperative, hortative, jussive
  • 5.7 Subordinate clauses
    • 5.7.1 Relative clauses
    • 5.7.2 Content clauses
  • 5.8 Conjunctions
• 6 Pragmatics
  • 6.1 Greetings
  • 6.2 Affirmation/Denial
  • 6.3 Courtesy
  • 6.4 Direct speech
  • 6.5 Date and time
  • 6.6 Remote past and future
• 7 Lexicon
  • 7.1 Derivational morphology
  • 7.2 Flag spelling
• 8 Appendix
  • 8.1 Morphosyntax overview
• 9 Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations

1 Introduction

The Emoji Language (😀💬) is a constructed language with a logographic writing system that consists solely of Unicode Emoji. It was created by Thomas Heller in 2021. The language exhibits an agglutinative morphology and VSO syntax.

More information about the Emoji Language can be found on the Emoji Language website at: https://tmh.conlang.org/emoji-language/

1.1 Goals

The goal of the Emoji Language project was to prove that Unicode Emoji can be used to build a fully functioning language that can potentially be used for everyday conversation.

At the same time, I wanted to make the language actually practical to use and avoid needless complexity in the grammar, so that people could actually have fun using the language.

Also, from a technical point of view, the language is supposed to work with any recent device that supports Unicode Emoji, without installing extra software.

1.2 Challenges

1.2.1 Abstract emoji

Unicode Emoji already contain a lot of symbols that can be used to represent specific, tangible concepts without having to tweak their definitions.

For example, the emoji 🍎 and 🎸 can be added to the dictionary straight away as nouns symbolizing "apple" and "guitar", respectively.

However, due to their static visual nature, emoji make it difficult to express more abstract and dynamic concepts:

• Copular and modal verbs (e.g. "to be", "must")
• Verbs in general (e.g. "to give", "to take")
• Nouns for categories (e.g. "animal", "fruit")

There is a limited number of abstract emoji -- such as arrows -- that can be used to express abstract concepts, like tense or location. When defining the lexicon, I had to find a good balance in an attempt not to waste these rare symbols.

It quickly became apparent that identical emoji would have to be used for both noun and verbs meanings. Such homonyms prevent the reader from recognizing the lexical category of an emoji by just looking at it, but are necessary to express basic concepts with the limit set of Unicode Emoji.

1.2.2 Ambiguous emoji

Since emoji have been around several years, people already developed habits regarding their use, and not everyone agrees on the meaning of certain emoji.

The Emoji Language, however, must be quite strict when defining the meaning of some emoji, to ensure that basic concepts can be expressed unambiguously.

For very common emoji like 👍 and 🙂 I tried to stick with their familiar meaning. Nonetheless, Emoji Language is a language in its own right. Like with other foreign languages, and even though it seems partially familiar, its vocabulary must be learned explicitly.

1.2.3 Rejected emoji

Several emoji proposals were already rejected¹ and thus must be represented using existing emoji.

1.2.4 "Twin" emoji

A few emoji exist in pairs with little or almost no discernible difference, such as:

• 📌 and 📍 (some fonts even depict both pins with the same angle)
• 🚗 and 🚘 (some fonts even depict both cars with the same color)

To avoid possible confusion for the readers, the best course of action was often to declare these emoji as synonymous, with the obvious downside of reducing the number of available emoji further.

1.3 Foundation

The Emoji Language is currently based on the Full Emoji List (v13.0), available from the Unicode Consortium: https://unicode.org/emoji/charts-13.0/full-emoji-list.html

That list contains a total of 3,304 emoji when taking all possible combinations of gender, skin tone and other modifiers into account.²

Some emoji³ are available as both a black and white as well as a color variant. In such cases, the color variant should be used whenever possible, to keep the presentation of emoji consistent.

2 Phonology

As Emoji Language is primarily a visual language, there isn't any phonology per se, and, technically speaking, there are no phonemes or syllables.

2.1 Spelling Emoji Language

Even though Emoji Language doesn't have any pronunciation by itself there is a need to communicate individual emoji symbols verbally, like when teaching Emoji Language to others or discussing Emoji Language in general in another language.

In such instances, the CLDR Short Name from the Full Emoji List mentioned above should be used to refer to individual emoji symbols.⁴

3 Writing system

Emoji Language is written using Unicode Emoji and therefore does not make use of any other familiar glyphs such as letters of the Latin alphabet or punctuation.

(For more information about spelling names from the Latin alphabet, see the Flag spelling section.)

3.1 Spacing

Each word is separated by horizontal spacing.

Because there is no emoji symbol that represents a full stop, each sentence must start in a new line. To increase readability, it is recommended to add one extra blank line between sentences, and two between paragraphs.

Emoji Language is typically written from left to right, however, if the default text direction of the writer's input device is right to left and the reader expects it as well, this writing direction is by all means acceptable as well.

3.2 Punctuation

The gesture ✌ is used for quotation marks, for example:

Aside from that, there are no distinct punctuation marks, although the symmetric subordinate clause emoji serve a similar purpose (see Subordinate clauses).

3.3 Digital input

To make Emoji Language work in practice, people need some way to input emoji quickly and easily. Current smartphone keyboards usually hold a history of recently used emoji for fast access, which is a step in the right direction, and they usually offer to search for emoji by CLDR Short Name a well.

As a rule of thumb, people should not need to type more keystrokes to enter an emoji than they would need to enter the corresponding word in English. To optimize emoji input on desktop devices further, I have created an experimental Emoji Input Tool that can be found here: https://tmh.conlang.org/emoji-language/emoji-input.html

4 Morphology

Technically speaking, a single emoji could be considered a single morpheme.

Looking at the Unicode Emoji standard, there are several emoji that consist of multiple emoji characters internally which are concatenated by invisible "zero width joiner" (ZWJ) characters to form a

These emoji would still be considered single morphemes, because they are intended to be displayed as single emoji. If such emoji show up as separate images, it is just due to technical limitations, not by design.

Examples:

• 🚀 A single emoji (rocket) that would be considered a single morpheme.
• 🧑‍🍳 An emoji ZWJ sequence. Technically made up of multiple characters: "person" (🧑) and "cooking pan" (🍳). Should be displayed as a single emoji on modern devices. Either way, it would be considered a single morpheme.
• 🐑🥣 Two separate emoji (sheep, bowl) which would be considered multiple morphemes.

Usually, Emoji Language words are made up of single morphemes. If they have prefixes and/or suffixes, or are compound words, they will consist of multiple morphemes.

Words in Emoji Language belong to one of the following word classes:

• Nouns (n.)
• Verbs (v.)
• Adjectives (adj.)
• Adverbs (adv.)
• Pronouns (pp., dem., int., rel.)
• Conjunctions (conj.)
• Interjections (interj.)
• Quantifiers (num.)

In addition, some emoji are used for the following purposes:

• Prefixes (possessive, demonstrative, locative, interrogative, negation, mood)
• Suffixes (tense, comparison, ordinality)
• Punctuation ("✌")

All word classes are quasi-closed classes. Aside from noun compounding it is not possible to add new words to the language, because there is no straightfoward technical way for us to include new emoji that would be available to all users without installing extra software on their devices.

The only way for new root words to be added to Emoji Language is for the Unicode Consortium to publish a new version of the Emoji standard, so definitions for them can be added in the Emoji Language dictionary. It is possible to submit proposals⁵ for new emoji directly to the Unicode Consortium though.

4.1 Nouns

Nouns are inflected for number, possession, and demonstrativeness by affixation.

Also, nouns can be modified using locative prefixes and the instrumental, benefactive, and equative prefixes.

Definiteness is not explicitly marked, however, the demonstrative prefixes can be used to convey a similar meaning if it's not obvious from context.

4.1.1 Number

Emoji Language distinguishes between singular and plural. By default, nouns are considered singular. Plural is indicated by reduplication:

In compound nouns, only the last symbol is reduplicated:

4.1.2 Possession

There are six possessive prefixes -- singular and plural for each of the three persons:

By default, possessive prefixes are not gender-specific, however, if needed, the following gender prefixes can be used for third person possessive prefixes:

Possession can also be indicated using the verb 🛄 (to have sth., to own sth.), as in:

There is no genitive case in Emoji Language to express possession. Instead, compounding or relative clauses are used (see the Compound nouns and Relative clauses sections, respectively).

4.1.3 Demonstrativeness

The demonstrative prefixes 🤌 and 👈 can be used to refer to objects close to or far away from the speaker, respectively:

For plural nouns, the prefix is reduplicated as well:

Demonstrative prefixes can also be used to convey a sense of definiteness.

4.1.4 Locative prefixes

Emoji Language has a variety of locative prefixes that can be used to indicate the place or motion of an event:

The following examples sentences demonstrate the use of locative prefixes in context:

4.1.5 Instrumental prefix

The instrumental prefix is used to express the means by which an action was carried out. In the narrow sense, this refers to some tool or device. However, the instrumental prefix can also be used to refer to people or abstract concepts.

4.1.6 Benefactive prefix

The benefactive prefix indicates the benefit or beneficiary of an action:

4.1.7 Equative prefix

The equative prefix shows how the action compares to another noun phrase:

4.1.8 Compound nouns

Multiple noun emoji can be used to form noun compounds, for example 🚗 (car) and 🔑 (key) can be combined to form 🚗🔑 (car key).

In compounds, the left emoji narrows down the meaning of the right emoji. Technically speaking, compounds are "left grouping".

Longer compounds can be formed as well, for example 🍫🏭🚪 (chocolate factory door), which means "the door of a factory that produces chocolate"⁶.

In theory, there is no limit to the length of compounds. In practice, compounds should probably be limited to three emoji. For more complex expressions, relative clauses are preferable (see Relative clauses).

4.2 Pronouns

Pronouns are very similar to possessive and demonstrative suffixes.

4.2.1 Personal pronouns

The personal pronouns are loosely based on American Sign Language (ASL) gestures. Emoji don't quite match the actual perspective, but are intended as an approximation: Imagine a bird's eye view where the speaker is in the top center and the listener in the bottom center.

If needed, there are also gender-specific variants of the third person personal pronouns:

4.2.2 Demonstrative pronouns

Example:

4.2.3 Reflexive pronouns

Reflexive pronouns refer back to another noun phrase within the same clause.

For the reflexive pronouns, gender-specific variants are also available:

Example:

The reflexive pronouns must not be confused with their English use for emphasis. To stress that an action was carried out alone, the 😨 emoji is used:

4.3 Verbs

Verbs are conjugated for tense and mood.

4.3.1 Tense

Emoji Language distinguishes three tenses: present, past and future. While the present tense is unmarked, the past and future are indicated by appending the tense suffixes ⬅️ and ➡️ respectively:

When a specific time is given, the verb is conjugated in the same manner, for example:

4.3.2 Mood

The modality of a statement changes depending on the mood prefix of the verb:

The following example sentences illustrate the use of subjunctive, permissive, obligative, abilitive, and desiderative mood:

Subjunctive:

Permissive:

Obligative:

Abilitive:

Desiderative:

Negation will be explained in the next section. See also Yes-no questions and Imperative, hortative, jussive for examples with those prefixes.

4.3.3 Negation

An indicative sentence can be negated by prepending ❌ to the verb:

4.4 Adjectives/Adverbs

Adjectives are directly prepended to nouns, for example:

In noun compounds, the adjective modifies only the first part of the noun, for example 🔵👞🏭 (blue shoe factory) is a factory where blue shoes are produced. The color of the factory building itself is not specified in this expression. A good way to state such details are subordinate clauses (see Subordinate clauses).

Adjectives can also be prepended to verbs, serving as adverbs, for example:

4.5 Numerals

The so-called "keycap"⁷ emoji 0️⃣ to 9️⃣ can be used as absolute quantifiers before nouns. If a specific number is given, plural nouns are reduplicated as usual, as the following table illustrates:

As a special case, 🔟 can be used as a shorthand for 1️⃣0️⃣, but that is not mandatory.

The ordinal suffix 🏅 marks ordinal numbers:

In addition to absolute numerals, the following quantification prefixes can be applied to nouns:

Example sentences:

The quantifiers can also appear as verb prefixes to indicate how often repeated actions happen:

Note that quantifiers always go before the expression that they modify.

4.6 Comparison

Comparative expressions are formed using the suffixes 🔼 ("more") and 🔽 ("less").

Superlative expressions are formed using the suffixes ⏫ ("most") and ⏬ ("least").

The suffixes can be used in several places, such as with adjectives, adverbs and verbs.

Note, however, that comparative and superlative suffixes always go after the expression that they modify, which is what distinguishes them from quantifiers.

4.6.1 Comparing adjectives

Example sentences:

4.6.2 Comparing adverbs

Example sentence:

4.6.3 Comparing verb phrases

Example sentences:

5 Syntax

5.1 Basic statements

The basic word order is VSO (verb--subject--object). This syntax makes it particularly easy to spot which part of the sentence is actually the verb, since many emoji can be used as both nouns and verbs.

Because nominative and accusative case are not marked on the nouns, word order is very important for deciphering the relationship between noun phrases.

Compare the following two examples:

Hence, the subject of a sentence can never be omitted. If the subject is meant to be unspecified, the person symbol 👤 is used:

Such constructions can be used to translate passive voice constructions from other languages.

5.2 Place, manner and time

After subject and direct object, additional information may be given about location/motion, manner and time:

5.3 Verbal adjunct fronting

In some cases, the default word order of Emoji Language leads to ambiguity.

Consider the following -- admittedly contrived -- example:

The statement can be interpreted in two ways:

First: "I drank {the water for the plants}", in the sense that someone drank the water that was originally meant for the plants. Perhaps due to some kind of dementia, perhaps because no other water was available in an emergency situation.

Second: "I {drank the water} for the plants", in the sense that someone drank water believing it would somehow help the plants. Perhaps because they thought that regularly drinking water themselves would remind them to water the plants.

This kind of ambiguity can be resolved by moving such additional information about place, manner and time towards the front of the sentence, directly behind the verb:

This version of the statement makes it clear that the adjunct "for the plants" indeed belongs to the verb, i.e. the speaker drank the water because they believed it would somehow help the plants (second interpretation above).

In contrast, if a speaker wanted to emphasize that they actually drank the water that was meant for the plants (first interpretation above), they could in this case use noun compounding for clarification:

Note that subject and direct object cannot be moved as freely. Their order must always stay the same, so that their role in the sentence remains recognizable.

5.4 Yes-no questions

To form a yes-no question, the interrogative suffix ❔ is appended to the conjugated verb. The word order remains unchanged:

5.5 Wh-questions

The interrogative symbol ❔ also functions as a stand-alone interrogative pronoun, when it is put in the position of subject or object:

Or it can be used to ask for clarification about a given noun:

The interrogative prefix can also be combined with locative prefixes to form interrogative words regarding places and motion:

The above type of question is also possible with all the other locative prefixes described in the Locative prefixes section.

The special possessive prefix ❔👉 can be used to ask for the possessor of a noun:

The interrogative prefix ❔➕ (how, literally "what-with") is used to ask for manner:

The interrogative prefix can be combined with the emoji for "cause" (🙆) and the benefactive prefix emoji (💁) to ask for the cause or purpose of something, respectively. Both questions are expressed in English with the interrogative pronoun "why?".

The interrogative prefix ❔⚖️ (literally "what-like") is used to ask for similarity:

The interrogative prefix ❔🔢 is used to ask for the quantity of a noun:

When asking for quantity, the noun appears in singular form.

The same interrogative prefix can be used with verbs to ask for how many times something happens:

5.6 Imperative, hortative, jussive

To form an imperative expression (command), the verb is put in imperative mood (see also Mood). The subject of the sentence specifices to whom the command is directed:

(Note that the second person pronoun 👇 cannot be omitted.)

When the subject is in the first person plural, the mood becomes hortative, and the sentence is meant to encourage an action:

The use of this verb prefix can be extended to form jussive mood constructions that express strong wishes in a more general way:

5.7 Subordinate clauses

Word order in subordinate clauses is also VSO (verb--subject--object).

5.7.1 Relative clauses

Relative clauses are one method of embedding subordinate clauses into main clauses.

Relative clauses are enclosed by the relative pronoun ➰, which means a second ➰ is required to mark the end of the subordinate clause, like a comma at the end of subordinate clause.

Simply put, relative clauses allow to make two statements about the same entity, without repeating it in another sentence, for example:

The argument immediately before the relative pronoun, in this case 🔵🏭, is implicitily inserted into the subordinate clause at the subject position.

The relative clause construction is essentially a shorter way of saying the following two separate sentences:

It is also possible to use the relative pronoun ➿ instead, which implies the object position, for example:

That is a simpler way of saying:

Finally, the locatives prefixes, as well as the instrumental, benefactive and equative prefixes, can be combined with the relative pronoun ➰ to form the following relative pronouns:

This is a simpler way of saying the following two sentences:

This type of construction is possible with all other locative prefixes as well, see the Locative prefixes section for a complete list.

The following examples illustrate the instrumental, benefactive, and equative relative pronouns:

In general, relative clauses of the same type cannot be nested by themselves, but content clauses or other types of relative clauses may appear within a relative clause, for example:

5.7.2 Content clauses

Another way of embedding subordinate clauses are content clauses. In this case, the whole subordinate clause -- enclosed by the conjunction 🔳 -- takes the place of what would otherwise be a simple noun or pronoun:

This is a clearer way of saying:

Content clauses are often used in the context of cognition, perception etc.

Another example that demonstrates this:

(See also Direct speech.)

Like with relative clauses, the locative prefixes as well as instrumental, benfactive and equative prefixes can be used to introduce content clauses:

Content clauses of the same type cannot be nested by themselves, but relative clauses or other types of content clauses may appear within a content clause, for example:

5.8 Conjunctions

The conjunction ➕ can be used in a cumulative sense, to join multiple verb, subjects, objects or subordinate clauses:

In the same way, the conjunction 🔘 works in an alternative sense:

The conjunction ‼ is used in to join sentences in an adversative way:

It is also comonly used in the context of comparison (see Comparison).

The conjunctions ▶️ (then) and ◀️ (because) form illative constructions:

If the statements are of hypothetical nature, the verb appears in subjunctive mood:

6 Pragmatics

6.1 Greetings

The emoji 👋 is used as a universal greeting, on meeting and parting.

To ask someone how they feel, one may use:

(Note that this can be understood as a prompt for a literal response, and is not necessarily part of an idiomatic greeting.)

6.2 Affirmation/Denial

The emoji 👍 (good, yes), 🆗 (okay) and sometimes 👌 (enough) are used to signal affirmation.

Likewise, 👎 (bad, no) is used to deny a statement or request.

6.3 Courtesy

To show courtesy when asking for a favor or to thank someone for something, the 🙏 emoji is used.

When asking for something politely, this can be combined with the subjunctive mood:

6.4 Direct speech

The standard word order for direct speech is as follows:

The speech in quotation marks can also be a noun, as in the following example:

Or a content clause:

In practice, however, the syntactic position of quoted statements is rather free.

Usually, they appear at the very end of main clauses:

However, for aesthetic reasons in narrations, they might as well appear before the actual main clause:

6.5 Date and time

A simple way to indicate time of day is using the clock emoji:

Age is expressed through possession:

6.6 Remote past and future

In literary works, the past and future tense markers may appear twice to indicate more distant events:

7 Lexicon

The official Emoji Language dictionary can be found on the website: https://tmh.conlang.org/emoji-language/

7.1 Derivational morphology

There are a few common patterns to derive new vocabulary from existing emoji definitions.

Country flags are choronyms that refer to states and regions, for example 🇫🇷 (France) or 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (Scotland). These flags can be used to derive names of languages spoken in these regions (linguonyms) and people living in these regions (demonyms), for example 🇪🇸💬 (Spanish language) and 🇸🇪👥 (Swedish people).

The suffix 👷 typically denotes a person working in a specific field if there is no single emoji to refer to the concept, for example 🧑‍🏫 (teacher) exists, but the profession 🏦👷 (banker, literally bank-worker) must be expressed by compounding.

In general, the abstraction suffix 💠 can be used to refer to the abstract category of something. For example, while 🍎 refers to a specific fruit (apple), 🍎💠 refers to any type of fruit. This sometimes necessary, when the meaning of a specific emoji would otherwise be too narrow.

7.2 Flag spelling

Proper names that do not appear in the emoji lexicon, can be spelled using flag emoji. In this case, the flag emoji are used to represent letters of the Latin alphabet, which are not available as emoji.

In proper names, flags stand for the first letter of their country's name, according to the following table:

When a name is spelled using flags, it is usually assumed that it is a person’s name, unless something else can be assumed from context.

To remove this ambiguity, a flag name is typically suffixed with a "class noun" emoji that represents a person, country, animal etc., for example:

Note that the Emoji Language has undergone a "spelling reform" in June 2021. In the original version, "G", "I", and "J" were represented using the country flags of Greece (🇬🇷), India (🇮🇳), and Japan (🇯🇵), respectively, so you might still encounter them in early Emoji Language texts.

The spelling has been changed because the names of these countries start with different letters in their native language (Elláda, Bhārat, and Nippon, respectively) compared to their English names.

The goal is to use country names with matching endonym and exonym⁸ instead, to make the corresponding letters more easily recognizable and avoid any ambiguity. For the letter "O", currently no country matching this criterion is available, so the flag of Oman (🇴🇲, ‘Umān) has been kept.

8 Appendix

8.1 Morphosyntax overview

Sentence: Verb (Subject (Object)) (Place/Motion ...) (Time)

Noun: (Interrog..)(Loc.|Ins.|Ben.|Equ.)(Dem.)(Poss.)(Quant.)(Adj.)Noun Stem(Pl.)

Verb: (Imp.|Interrog.)(Mood)(Neg.)(Quant.)(Adverb)Verb Stem(Tense)

Adjective/Adverb: Stem(Comparison)

Noun Stem: Root | Pers. Pronoun | Dem. Pronoun | Name | Compound

Name: Flag(...)(Class Noun)

Compound: Noun Stem ...

For more details, see also the sections about Subordinate clauses and Conjunctions.

9 Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Manfred Hübner [ˈmanfreːd ˈhyːbnɐ] for bringing up the question if a pure emoji language would be possible, and for proofreading my drafts.

Abbreviations

1. See http://randomguy32.de/unicode/misc/rejected-emoji-proposals/ ↩︎
2. See https://unicode.org/emoji/charts-13.0/emoji-counts.html ↩︎
3. See https://unicode.org/emoji/charts-13.0/emoji-variants.html for a complete list. ↩︎
4. Note that CLDR Short Names may change in the future. For more information about CLDR, see: https://unicode.org/emoji/format.html#col-name ↩︎
5. See https://unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html ↩︎
6. Not "a door that is made from chocolate and leads to a factory", which would be "right grouping". ↩︎
7. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keycap regarding the etymology of "keycap". ↩︎
8. See the article "List of countries and dependencies and their capitals in native languages" on the English Wikipedia, for example. ↩︎