Re: Has anyone made a real conlang?
| From: | william drewery <will65610@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Saturday, April 26, 2003, 20:35 |
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I just joined this list, and I'm excited to see that
there is a place where stimulating discussions occur
other than "Magic The Gathering" sessions.
Anyway, here's my two cents: I'm not sure
insectoid use of pjeremones constitutes any language,
because there is no information content. Nothing is
expressed. The insect behavior is simply modified, but
there is no "thought". That's why a male moth will
mate with a piece of plastic covered with femal moth
pheremones. It seems to me that in order for something
to be a lnguage, it must express infrmation, not just
signals. That's not to say pheremones couldn't be used
as basis for a lnguage, just that present insect
pheremone use does not comprise one.
--- Stone Gordonssen <stonegordonssen@...>
wrote:
> >>We could go to an extreme and say that
> >>release of a pheromone attracting the
> >>opposite sex of an insect species is a
> >>language. We need many terms to describe
> >>many kinds of languages.
> >
> >You didn't answer the question.
>
> That would have limited his ability to expand the
> scope of his argument.
>
> Personally, I don't find a unmodifiable pheremones
> used to single express
> 1. I/we need to mate now.
> 2. I'm/we're going to attack you now.
> 3. I've/we've found food, follow me/us.
> to comprise a language, though I have read at least
> one thesis dealing
> hypothetically with the benefits/disadvantages of a
> phermonic language.
>
> And yes, before anyone says it, I know that dances
> of colony bees can
> indicate more information - e.g. direction, distance
> and quantity of food.
> I'm not an apiarist (apiologist? apiary
> entomologist), so I can't speak the
> limits of variablity within it (thought _Language
> and Species_ by Derek
> Bickerton is one attempt to do so).
>
>
>
>
>
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