Re: research note on Pwxx (draft)

Hallo!

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 16:24:24 -0500,
"Mark P. Line" <mark@...> wrote:

> Jörg Rhiemeier said:
>
> [...]
>
> > One of far too few non-human conlangs that don't resemble
> > a human language.
>
> I guess I should start applying for grants on speculative exolinguistics.
> We need to be ready when the time comes.....
I think whatever we may speculate about what languages of alien
intelligences could be like, when they really show up, what we
may see probably goes beyond our speculations.

> > Are the "Greys" who speak this language the same "Greys" that we know from
> > UFO mythology?
>
> Yes.
I guessed that.  Where do you imagine them to hail from?  Zeta-2
Reticuli?

> > In this case, the phonology would indeed fit, as those Greys are sometimes
> > described as uttering hissing noises.
>
> Oh my, now isn't that a coincidence. :)
Possibly, the Greys have no vocal chords, and for some reason cannot
block their oral passage, only narrow it sufficiently to cause friction.
They perhaps have no nasal passage, either.  (Most artistic renderings
of Greys show a pair of tiny openings where a human's nose would be,
but it is anyone's guess what these openings are.)

As far as I know (I am no UFO expert), the Greys rarely make any kind
of noise, but if they do, it is some kind of hissing rather than
human-like speech, and in the very rare cases when they speak,
their voices sound rather robotic - probably artificial.

> > Keep it up!  I'd like to see more of Pwxx.
>
> Thanks, you will. I'll be fleshing out the mood/focus/negation report as
> well as writing a number of other Research Notes on the language.
> Eventually, everything will get poured into a grammatical sketch using a
> standard functional outline. I also want to try some formant synthesis of
> example utterances.
I like this style of presentation.  Pretty much what we are trying
to do in the League of Lost Languages.  Though Pwxx, being non-human,
is not an LLL candidate.

> As with my other current artlangs, this one is a contract job (so to
> speak) for one of my wife's fiction/RPG projects.
Is there anything sufficiently developed to present on CONLANG?
I'm curious.

>       One of the other
> languages for this particular conworld is going to be a new experience for
> me because its primary mode of expression is manual. I'm exploring the
> linguistics of human sign natlangs as we, umm, speak.
Sign languages are something I haven't explored yet, either.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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