Re: CHAT: Parallelism

Dan Neilson wrote:


> Has anyone given any thought as to how to construct a parallel language?
>
> Spoken and written language tend to be fairly serial, that is they can
only
> express one thing at a time. Other things can be hinted at, through
> metaphor, connotation, etc., but only one can be explicit. How would it be
> possible to construct a language which could be used to explicitly speak
> (write, gesture) about two (or more) things simultaneously?
Well, I think that the problem is that our minds are a combination of serial
or spacial thoughts, not parallel.  This way we represent the world in
serial utterances: spoken or written languages, or in spacial ways: signed
languages and drawings.  But we could design alien speacies with parallel
thinking... and describe their language.

> The ideas that I had seemed a little lame... For example one could have
two
> languages, one in which each word consisted only of vowels, the other in
> which each word consisted only of consonants. The latter would be
> syllabified, and you could stick any vowel into each syllable. Then, when
> speaking, the vowels would say one thing and the consonants another.
>
> A similar way would be to have one language which used certain sounds,
> probably front articulations, and another which used back articulations.
> They would have to be arranged so that the two did not interfere with each
> other. Then you use the two simultaneously. A little difficult,
probably...
>
> Looking at the problem in a slightly less practical way, consider this:
Look
> at language as a means of dealing with abstracted concepts. Without the
> constraint of it needing to be written or spoken, how could you design and
> distribute these concepts to allow their use in a parallel fashion? (That
is
> a very open-ended question, I know...) Consider it, for example, as a
> language used only for thinking. It removes many of the constraints, but
> raises the design standards to a great degree.
>
> Any ideas?
Have you ever tried to write and speak about unrelated thinks
simultanoeusly... not that is imposible but is difficult.  I've tried to
sign and talk but doesn't seam too easy either unless signs follow words or
words follow signs, but I think an approach of oral+signed language is
better than one of two language articulating simultaneously in the mouth.

-- Carlos Th