Re: OT: Non-human languages (was OT: Dolphin intelligence (...))

On Wednesday 02 July 2003 07:12 am, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> writes:
> >       and 2) no matter how alien I tried to make the
> > extraterrestrials, they still seemed way to human.
>
> It is really hard, if not outright impossible, to invent an alien race
> that is not a kind of human stereotype in disguise.  Most sci-fi
authors
> "alienize" their aliens by giving them a non-human anatomy
> (and be it a few amendments on the human body plan) and some
> salient personality trait.  The problem with this is that the aliens
> are defined by which way they differ from humans, and the humans
> thus represent a "normal type".  That is of course complete bull.
Well, yes. This is also due to the limits of human imagination. It's
difficult to imagine something thinking differently from ourselves when
we are the only data point we have (or recognize).

> > Should we one day meet 'intelligent' extraterrestrials, we might
very well be
> > able to discuss maths and astronomy with them, but I'd be quite
pessimistic
> > about the possibilities for meaningfully discussing things involving
emotions
> > and Weltanschauung.
>
> I am not very optimistic about the possibilities of inter-species
conversation,
> either.  Their mindset will most likely be so alien that we and they
have
> rather little to say to each other.
>
> >       Dolphins may be a better bet, since they are not too
> > alien - their brains, as far as known, work much like ours - but I
still
> > expect their minds to be quite different from ours, perhaps to the
point of
> > making communication deeper than "the fish is over there" pointless.
>
> Possible.  But as you say, the difference between human and dolphin
> minds will most likely be small compared to the difference between
> human and ET minds.  And yet human-dolphin communication
> will be difficult.
Well, considering that Evolution is probably universal, then some things
we'd share with an alien species might include: survival, reproduction,
kinship, cooperation, illness, death, parasites, food, waste, etc.
These are things that are relevant to any organism, sapient or
otherwise.

> > I've never tried to make any of my conlangs 'truly non-human', not
even
> > Yargish, which is supposedly spoken by non-humans, because I do not
believe I
> > could possibly succeed. Anything I create will be either a human
language, or
> > not a language at all.
Since Kélen is purportedly a non-human language, I guess I should say
something. I figured I'd violate a very basic universal, all languages
have nouns & verbs, by not having verbs. But, being human myself, I
still wanted to deal with relating the arguments of the sentence, etc.
So, I have four verb-like particles instead. Now, since in every human
language we've studied, verbs are an open class, and in Kélen, they
(whatever you want to call them) are a closed class, I've still made
something different.

So, I recently read a book called "Lexical Categories: Verbs, Nouns, And
Adjectives" by Mark C Baker, wherein he attempts to come up with
definitions for various parts of speech. Most of the books is
theoretical & over my head, but parts of it were very interesting. In
his section on verbs, he talks about verbless human languages. After
demolishing the claims of Mohawk, Choctaw, Salish, and other languages
that have been claimed to make no distinction between nouns & verbs, he
says that it is possible for a verbless human language to exist:

"It is not inconceivable that a human language could exist without a
lexical category of verb, however. One probably could not have a
natural human language without agents, themes, and predications. The
creation of these is not, however, the exclusive privilege of verbs in
my theory..."

He then goes on to describe a theoretical language that would have a
small number of functional words that govern the varoius nouns and
adjectives. (Sounds a lot like Kélen!) He then goes on to show that
these sorts of things already do exist, normally in languages that also
have verbs. They usually get translated as 'be' or 'make'.

He also makes a statement that I think is thoroughly apropos to Kélen
and to the conlanging of non-human languages in general:

"I will fail in these goals, of course, to varying degrees. But that is
no excuse for not having the right goals."

-Sylvia

--
Sylvia Sotomayor
sylvia1@ix.netcom.com
kelen@ix.netcom.com

Kélen language info can be found at:
http://home.netcom.com/~sylvia1/Kelen/kelen.html

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