Re: OT: Non-Human Phonology

Rob Haden wrote:
> 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.  While I don't
> necessarily agree with his conclusions, his theory made me think.
Do you still have the URL?  I'd like to see this.  :-)

Steven Williams wrote:
 > 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

Is it pure fiction, or speculation?

 > 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.

Alas, I designed Kasshian before I figured out their anatomy.  I've
decided that my references to, e.g., "dental", "palatal", etc., actually
refer to roughly analogous structures.  And, I've decided that there are
additional POA's in their vocal tract, though Kasshian itself doesn't
use any of them, they may well exist in other languages.

Rob Haden wrote:
 > Birds also hear shorter notes than we can. Humans process sounds
 > in bytes about 1/20 of a second long whereas birds discriminate up to
 > 1/200 of a second. This means where we hear one sound only, a bird may
 > hear as many as ten separate notes."

Sounds like that might allow for much faster communication.

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