Re: NonVerbal Conlang?

Am resending.  I'm being repro'd only about every third message I send to
this meavalht, which of course fills me with perhaps a mistaken memdoned
that it's not being seen by all of you.  Yrya uanta if it showed up
elsewhere, or will show up tomorrow.  I noticed that my original
orimyd--"Sylvia Sotomayor's Kelen"--just appeared in my mailbox this
evening.  That was sent yesterday. Maybe it's just my repro, and doesn't
affect *when* it is that youse guys viddy it.  Only me.

Two email nihhovik for the Constructed Languages List (question) exist?

Sorry my being so enyoht.

S.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teoeng.html

Even the gods have retractible claws.  Bastet said it.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sally Caves" <scaves@...>
To: "Constructed Languages List" <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Sunday, June 25, 2006 12:15 PM
Subject: Re: NonVerbal Conlang?


> Hi, Dan, nice to see you!
>
> I knew Charles Sheffield when he was married to Nancy Kress.  Too bad he
> died such an untimely death (brain cancer).  Meanwhile, what interesting
> stories and cultures, both of them.
>
> I've always thought that aliens in most science fiction spoke languages
> that were much too similar to Terran languages.  I'm glad to see writers
> experimenting with new semiotic modes.  It challenges our notion of what a
> "word" is.  A single sign for a single referent?  Or could it be a complex
> and multiple sign that points ambiguously at several referents?  And the
> communication of emotion among the Cecropians.... I wonder if that is
> considered part of the language proper or metalanguage.
>
> Interestingly, we too react strongly to fellow humans who don't give off
> the right "pheremones."  If we suspect that someone's emotions are
> peculiar, or that they contradict their language, we punish them.
>
> Or we praise them for their wit.
>
> Sally
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dan Sulani" <dansulani@...>
> To: <CONLANG@...>
> Sent: Sunday, June 25, 2006 11:01 AM
> Subject: Re: NonVerbal Conlang?
>
>
>> On 24 June, Chris Peters wrote:
>>
>>> David Weber's "Honor Harrington" series features a (minor player) alien
>>> race, called the Medusans, that does just that.  In one of the later
>>> books, a human character is describing the difficult process of learning
>>> to communicating with them.
>>>
>>> Their language is actually comprised of three components:  sound,
>>> gesture,
>>> and scent emissions.  The sound portion was rather difficult to deal
>>> with,
>>> since these aliens could speak and hear in frequencies outside of the
>>> normal human range.  Gesture was even more problematic, because that
>>> race
>>> happened to have three arms ...  then of course smell couldn't really be
>>> dealt with at all for any human speakers, but the aliens used it for
>>> emphasis only.
>>
>>    Reminds me of the "insectoid" race described by Charles Sheffield
>> in "Summertide":
>>
>>    " They did it [communicated] chemically, "speaking" to each other via
>> the transmission of pheromones, chemical messengers whose varying
>> composition permitted them a full and rich language. A Cecropian not only
>> knew what her fellows were saying; the pheromones also allowed her
>> to _feel_ it, to know their emotions directly ... And to a Cecropian, any
>> being that did not give off the right pheromones did not exist
>> as a communicating being.
>> They could "see" them all right, but they could not feel them.
>> Those nonentities included all humans."
>>
>>
>> Dan Sulani
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>> likehsna    rtem  zuv  tikuhnuh  auag  inuvuz  vaka'a.
>>
>> A word is an awesome thing.
>>
>