The Ling Space | What Could Alien Languages Look Like? @thelingspace | Uploaded 7 years ago | Updated 3 hours ago
What basic properties do all human languages have in common? How might languages from other worlds differ? In this week's episode, we take a look at potential alien languages: how we can categorize them differently from how our languages work, how they could potentially make sounds and compose meanings, and how imaginative we may have to be to understand what other species might have to say to us.
This is Topic #81!
This week's tag language: Na'Vi!
Last episode:
Nosing Around Phonetics: The Acoustics of Sonorant Consonants - youtu.be/g8BgfHEDbFY
Our previous Halloween videos:
Braaaaaaains: The Basics of Neurolinguistics - youtu.be/Yq7ozVixqDs
Future Tense: Predictions for the Future of Language - youtu.be/5hibYoYwGko
Our website also has extra content about this week's topic, discussing how complex alien languages might be, at: http://www.thelingspace.com/episode-81
Find us on all the social media worlds:
Tumblr: http://thelingspace.tumblr.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheLingSpace
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thelingspace
And at our website, http://www.thelingspace.com !
You can also find our store at the website, thelingspace.storenvy.com
We also have forums to discuss this episode, and linguistics more generally.
Sources:
On semiochemicals:
http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/the-science-of-music-why-do-songs-in-a-minor-key-sound-sad-760215
http://www.psycho.hes.kyushu-u.ac.jp/~lab_miura/Kansei/Workshop/proceedings/O-205.pdf
On the number of languages in the world:
http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/how-many-languages-are-there-world.
On bee dances:
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/B/BeeDances.html
On vervet monkey calls:
midnightmediamusings.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/which-species-has-a-language-most-like-human-language
books.google.ca/books?id=PQFuCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=vervet+monkey+calls+productivity
On one-word grammars and context:
https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/jackendoff/papers/simplersyntaxwritten.pdf
On posture and alien language:
youtube.com/watch?v=j9pFA2XfVEc
On metaphor and alien language:
youtube.com/watch?v=f3N0dlL2NU8
youtube.com/watch?v=3-wzr74d7TI
youtube.com/watch?v=ANvlLcOTy6M
Charles Hockett and language design features:
These initially come from Hockett's books, The Origin of Speech (1960) and A Note on Design Features (1968). But for online sources, try:
http://pages.uoregon.edu/redford/Courses/LING162/Handout_1.pdf
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett%27s_design_features
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_F._Hockett
Chomsky's digital infinity quote:
http://philpapers.org/rec/CHOLAC
Mark Liberman and his speculation on the limits of alien language:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=28159
A discussion of novel quantifiers & the problems with schmevery:
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hunter/conservativity/journal.pdf
https://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/~zimmermann/teaching/ALS2009/Session%20III.pdf
Looking forward to next week!
What basic properties do all human languages have in common? How might languages from other worlds differ? In this week's episode, we take a look at potential alien languages: how we can categorize them differently from how our languages work, how they could potentially make sounds and compose meanings, and how imaginative we may have to be to understand what other species might have to say to us.
This is Topic #81!
This week's tag language: Na'Vi!
Last episode:
Nosing Around Phonetics: The Acoustics of Sonorant Consonants - youtu.be/g8BgfHEDbFY
Our previous Halloween videos:
Braaaaaaains: The Basics of Neurolinguistics - youtu.be/Yq7ozVixqDs
Future Tense: Predictions for the Future of Language - youtu.be/5hibYoYwGko
Our website also has extra content about this week's topic, discussing how complex alien languages might be, at: http://www.thelingspace.com/episode-81
Find us on all the social media worlds:
Tumblr: http://thelingspace.tumblr.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheLingSpace
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thelingspace
And at our website, http://www.thelingspace.com !
You can also find our store at the website, thelingspace.storenvy.com
We also have forums to discuss this episode, and linguistics more generally.
Sources:
On semiochemicals:
http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/the-science-of-music-why-do-songs-in-a-minor-key-sound-sad-760215
http://www.psycho.hes.kyushu-u.ac.jp/~lab_miura/Kansei/Workshop/proceedings/O-205.pdf
On the number of languages in the world:
http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/how-many-languages-are-there-world.
On bee dances:
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/B/BeeDances.html
On vervet monkey calls:
midnightmediamusings.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/which-species-has-a-language-most-like-human-language
books.google.ca/books?id=PQFuCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=vervet+monkey+calls+productivity
On one-word grammars and context:
https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/jackendoff/papers/simplersyntaxwritten.pdf
On posture and alien language:
youtube.com/watch?v=j9pFA2XfVEc
On metaphor and alien language:
youtube.com/watch?v=f3N0dlL2NU8
youtube.com/watch?v=3-wzr74d7TI
youtube.com/watch?v=ANvlLcOTy6M
Charles Hockett and language design features:
These initially come from Hockett's books, The Origin of Speech (1960) and A Note on Design Features (1968). But for online sources, try:
http://pages.uoregon.edu/redford/Courses/LING162/Handout_1.pdf
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett%27s_design_features
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_F._Hockett
Chomsky's digital infinity quote:
http://philpapers.org/rec/CHOLAC
Mark Liberman and his speculation on the limits of alien language:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=28159
A discussion of novel quantifiers & the problems with schmevery:
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hunter/conservativity/journal.pdf
https://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/~zimmermann/teaching/ALS2009/Session%20III.pdf
Looking forward to next week!
