Re: OT: Non-Human Phonology

--- Rob Haden <magwich78@...> schrieb:

> Greetings, everyone!
> So it all started when I was websurfing a couple
> weeks ago. I came across a site that speculated on
> the possibility of intelligent dinosaurs. The author
> surmised that it wasn't an asteroid impact that
> caused the K-T Extinction Event, but rather a
saurian
> civilization.
Have you ever read Stephen Baxter's "Evolution"? In
one of the chapters, Baxter goes on to detail a small
civilization of tool- and language-using Jurassic
predators (I think they evolved from ornitholestes, a
small bipedal predator with very well-developed hands,
supposed by many scientists to be used to seize
struggling prey).

> Pretty soon the question of language came up. The
way
> I see it, the anthroposaurs would have been pretty
> bird-like, with feathers and probably even beaks.
Why beaks? Birds evolved beaks because of weight
restrictions for flight (teeth and their associated
support structures are fairly heavy); unless your
anthroposaurs are meant to fly, I'd imagine teeth to
be a greater advantage than disadvantage.

Feathers are pretty probable, if your anthroposaurs
evolved from small carnivores (dromaeosaurs,
ornithomimids and their ilk). We're pretty sure these
days that the littler dinosaurs were befeathered (we
have fossil evidence for some recently-discovered
species), and even possibly the larger ones (T. rex
with plumage is too delicious an idea to pass up).

> As a result, the sounds they made would have also
> been similar to those of real-life birds.
Agreed. It's just too 'ugly' to imagine a Troodon
grunting and roaring; it's 'feels' much more accurate
to imagine them chirping and rasping. This is just me
talking from an aesthetic point of view, of course; I
don't know the first thing about saurian
communication.

> That means their language would have to be radically
> different from that of humans, at least when it
comes
> to phonology.
Agreed. There simply are too many possibilities to
assume that another species, evolving along another
line, would simply happen to have the same sound-set
as us humans.

> Instead of distorting the airflow through changing
> the shape and articulation of the mouth, other means
> would have to be used. Right now I'm thinking that
> pitch, frequency, and tonality would play a much
> greater role in the anthroposaurs' speech. Beyond
> that, I'm not quite sure yet, but suffice it to say
> that their language would sound a lot more musical
> than any (unsung!) human tongue.
The glottis, pharynx and epiglottis are some untapped
possibilities (in humans, at least; many of our
languages don't even bother with that region at all),
though I'm not sure if those structures are analogous
to similar avian structures (avian anatomy is not one
of my strong suits).


	

	
		
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