icalani

[Jaaaaaa]

WHat is the icelani language like? assumig they have oine at all...

[zompist]

WHat is the icelani language like? assumig they have oine at all...

No idea yet, except that I plan to make it a simple language, something like a pidgin. They're not very bright.

[Jaaaaaa]

cool. pidgins are fun.

[Glenn]

A pidgin shouldn't be that hard; as I understand, they tend to have a simple structure, grammar, and vocabulary (not that you can't do some neat things with that).

I have heard that the world's various pidgins and creoles tend to share similar grammatical patterns--is this true? How consistent are the patterns among speakers? (After all, a real pidgin is generally a lingua franca, not a native language.)

I wrote a post on the old board suggesting a language for the icelani that would convey words and emotions, but with no real structure, more like a stream of consciousness--at the time, I was referring to Z's example of Nim Chimpsky's chimpanzee sign language on the Proto-World page:

"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you..."

Even if the icelani have a more structured language, their thinking patterns may still be different--with reference to time, for example. Animals, as a rule, seem to have less of a sense of "past, present, and future" than humans, although the more intelligent ones have more of one. Maybe the icelani have a less distinct sense of time than the more "evolved" races?

p@,
Glenn

[eodrakken]

Even if the icelani have a more structured language, their thinking patterns may still be different--with reference to time, for example. Animals, as a rule, seem to have less of a sense of "past, present, and future" than humans, although the more intelligent ones have more of one. Maybe the icelani have a less distinct sense of time than the more "evolved" races?

It's hard to say what sense an animal has of time. One of the sign-language-using gorillas, Michael, would talk to his teacher about things that had happened to him in the far past. He reacted with definite emotion to the memories, which some have argued means he didn't recognize them as being past. That's pretty silly, though, since we humans often react to our own memories with the same emotional force we experienced at the time -- especially if the memory is upsetting or embarrassing.

Still, I think one of the primary differences between animal communication and intelligent language is the ability to tell about something non-present. Whether it's past, future, hypothetical, a wish, or whatever.

Many animals are very good at telling their kin what's happening now, with incredible specificity. It's been shown that even chickens have different "danger calls" for different predators, which other chickens react to accordingly.

So animals, even very unintelligent ones, can say "Now there's a hawk coming" and "Now there's a fox coming." What they can't say is "Remember that time the hawk came?" In its simplest form (getting back to primitive hominids), this is a construction that somehow means "Yeah, I'm talking about a danger signal, but it's not really happening, so you don't have to be scared." It overrides the instinct. That development must have been a huge leap in reasoning for early humans (and maybe the great apes as well).

I like Glenn's idea of modeling the icëlani language on ape sign language. I think not enough credit is given to these apes for their ability to communicate. Their language isn't human, but it is remarkably expressive.

p@,
Glenn

By the way... what's the meaning of "p@"?

[zompist]

So animals, even very unintelligent ones, can say "Now there's a hawk coming" and "Now there's a fox coming." What they can't say is "Remember that time the hawk came?" In its simplest form (getting back to primitive hominids), this is a construction that somehow means "Yeah, I'm talking about a danger signal, but it's not really happening, so you don't have to be scared." It overrides the instinct. That development must have been a huge leap in reasoning for early humans (and maybe the great apes as well).

This isn't specific to humans or even primates. Konrad Lorenz talks about the singing of jackdaws (some of the most intelligent of birds), which consists of repeating calls and cries from jackdaw life-- the going-home signal, the let's-fly signal, the don't-bug-me signal, predator signals-- a whole symphony of evocations of everday life, eloquent to anyone who (like Lorenz) knew the signals. The curious thing is, when one bird was singing, the other jackdaws never responded to the ordinary meaning of these calls. Lorenz could never figure out how they knew; he tells of often rushing out when he heard the predator signal, only to find a jackdaw peacefully singing and all the others calm.

[eodrakken]

That's wonderful, I hadn't heard that before. It doesn't really surprise me, though. That sort of bird has been shown to be able to do all sorts of things previously thought of as primate-only, like tool-making. I've always thought we underestimate animal intelligence. If the jackdaws are doing what they appear to be doing, I would indeed consider that language, even if we don't understand it yet. Continued study could reveal whether they're reciting something that actually happened, or -- wow -- making up stories. Jackdaw poetry! ;)

Has Konrad Lorenz written books, or articles, or what? I'm very interested to hear the details.

I'm surprised it isn't bigger news when things like this are discovered.

[Glenn]

So animals, even very unintelligent ones, can say "Now there's a hawk coming" and "Now there's a fox coming." What they can't say is "Remember that time the hawk came?" In its simplest form (getting back to primitive hominids), this is a construction that somehow means "Yeah, I'm talking about a danger signal, but it's not really happening, so you don't have to be scared." It overrides the instinct. That development must have been a huge leap in reasoning for early humans (and maybe the great apes as well).

Ray Bradbury, in his book Something Wicked This Way Comes, wrote a very beautiful passage in which one of his characters imagines the night that a primitive human (hominid) looked at his mate and child sleeping, and realized for the first time that there would come a day when they weren't there any more... It's a very moving piece of work.

p@,
Glenn

By the way... what's the meaning of "p@"?

I was wondering whether anyone would ask someday... "p@" is a homemade emoticon that a friend and I started using way back in 1994, based on a gesture I used at the time. (We didn't have any of these s back then. ) It's since become something of a personal trademark of mine; I use it in my E-mails with all of my friends, and some of them use it with me as well.

p@ means "a deep bow with a flourish"; the p is the head dipping down, and the @ is the flourish with the hand. (To picture it, imagine taking a deep bow while dramatically sweeping your hat off, or making a similar gesture with your hand. If we ever meet in person, I'll show it to you. )

p@,
Glenn

[Glenn]

I just read the posts discussing the jackdaws above; I hadn't heard about this, and I find it absolutely fascinating. (I've heard of Lorenz through other authors, but I haven't read any of his work myself.) I think this is the first time I've heard about any animal "telling stories" (or talking to themself, maybe?), with the exception of sign-language-using apes.

Eodrakken, you've created languages for cats, rats, and dogs (sort of); what might a jackdaw language be like?

p@,
Glenn

[zompist]

Has Konrad Lorenz written books, or articles, or what? I'm very interested to hear the details.

Several; that tidbit is from King Solomon's Ring. It's almost a half century old, but it's timeless. It's a thoroughly charming book; I re-read it every few years.

[Glenn]

As long as we're talking about animal memories--a new piece on CNN.com talks about a sea lion who recently demonstrated that she remembers a fairly complex test (picking matching shapes on cards) that scientists taught her ten years ago, even though she hadn't repeated it since. The scientist quoted compared the feat to their studies with elephants, and said that sea lions in the wild have a good memory for their territories and their place of birth--not to mention remembering and recognizing their mother's voice as pups. (So at least they have good memories for certain things, even if not everything.) I guess it just goes to show how much we still have to learn...

p@,
Glenn

[Neek]

Reading this, I would think that the Ic?lani would have a grammar based upon the most immediate effects, i.e. one-word sentences or strings of morphemes. Heavy repition, and a grammar based on heavy predication, and admontatives. Maybe a cause/effect system. I don't think tense would make a sure appearence, maybe a few morphemes for 'before' and 'after.' I doubt one could truly express something hypothetical, maybe imaginative?

I'm also guessing that such a language's phonetics would be heavily allophonic, that a few stock sounds with a high variety between them would be acceptable, and easily slipping phonetics (liasion, voicing, &c.) Such a degree of allophony would be interesting--In a language I made, Palul and Barol are purely allophonic equivalents. (p can be voiced at any given time, l is pronounced r between vowels, and u opens to o before liquids--all of this heard, however, not written).

Most likely a two-vowel system, maybe three. If two, e and o (generally middle vowels), and also their non-syllabified equivalents, y and w. High syllabification of consonants.
pwo: = there is/are
e: = admontative
hrd = predator.

pwo: e: hrd hrd e: pwo: hrd e: e: hrd!!!! *waving arms like a loonie*

[edit] Y'know, I wanted to ask about that p@. I always thought it meant 'peace.'

[Jaaaaaa]

whats admontivie?

[Neek]

Warning. If a language put a warning as part of their verb, they'd call it the admontative.

[Jaaaaaa]

pwo: = there is/are
e: = admontative
hrd = predator.

pwo: e: hrd hrd e: pwo: hrd e: e: hrd!!!! *waving arms like a loonie*

[edit] Y'know, I wanted to ask about that p@. I always thought it meant 'peace.'

THat means "there are predators" in a urgent sense i take it?

[Neek]

Yea. I used the idea from what the monkey had said. Repition and no clear word order.

[So Haleza Grise]

I have heard that the world's various pidgins and creoles tend to share similar grammatical patterns--is this true? How consistent are the patterns among speakers? (After all, a real pidgin is generally a lingua franca, not a native language.)

p@,
Glenn

Yes, that is true. For one thing, they tend to be isolating, losing any inflections that the source language might have; they have very limited stocks of prepositions (lots of Australian or Melanesian creoles basically use blong from English belong as an all-purpose preposition); they don't use articles, even if the parent language does; (a number of French-based pidgins have letabla or something similar as the word for "table" - the article is considered to simply a part of the noun, not a morpheme at all - they make heavy use of reduplification, for a number of different semantic purposes; and their phonology is generally that of the parent language but simplified, favouring open syllables and reducing consonant clusters. (For example, English-based creoles tend to cut the English vowel system down to five cardinal vowels.) Another, intriguing thing about pidgins, is that all around the word, certain pidgins have the same lexical items. Words such as "savvy" are used for "to know" in pidgins all over the Pacific, the Carribean, and Africa. The adjective particle in the Pacific in English-based creoles is universally pela from fella. Some have suggested that all English-based pidgins, for example, came from the same source. (to forestall any smart-arsery, yes I know that it's English! I mean the same source *pidgin*).

I must admit that my knowledge is limited to Australian and Melanesian pidgins; these are believed to have followed the route of Australian colonisation; inland throughout the continent; then into Papua New Guinea and throughout the Pacific region. However, French-based pidgins also show similar features to the English-based ones. I don't have any knowledge of non-IE language based creoles, but they do exist.

Incidentally, did you know that Lingua Franca was in fact an actual pidgin spoken throughout the Mediterranean? So a "lingua franca" should always be a pidgin!

Oh, and i thought it was "pat" - and I always wondered why Glenn would pat himself at the end of his messages.

[eodrakken]

Eodrakken, you've created languages for cats, rats, and dogs (sort of); what might a jackdaw language be like? :wink:

Heh, you read my mind. Actually, I started working on a bird language some time ago, but didn't get very far with it. The main trouble was orthography. It could be written on a musical staff, but in text it came out like "c#fac cGG#F FDA#A Ffg#G#cEb BA A#gf#G#", which just isn't pretty. And with the corvidae family (jackdaws, crows, jays, etc.), you get not only musical notes, but also different kinds of calls -- screeches, chirps, coos, and the rest. That would be hard to write down.

But that aside, I'd probably start with the calls we know (I might ask my father, an ornithologist, to help with this) and try to form others by analogy. I've been thinking a lot about how Lorenz's jackdaws might have indicated a "non-present" utterance. It was something subtle enough that a perceptive human couldn't hear the difference. Maybe a very slight change in pitch or speed, or even body posture.

Another idea is to use the call for "everything's fine" in conjunction with the others to indicate that they're not really meant. It could be worn down to a particle, which could enable something like chimp syntax.

hawk hawk come
"A hawk is coming."

ok come hawk ok hawk ok ok
"A hawk was coming (but now everything's fine)."

This could become an irrealis marker on the verb or noun.

come-ok hawk
or
come hawk-ok

To get further than the obvious food and danger calls, I'd try to get a better sense of how these birds see the world. I'd ask my dad again, and read, and observe the crows and jays that live in my neck of the woods.

Oh, and i thought it was "pat" - and I always wondered why Glenn would pat himself at the end of his messages.

I thought of that too. Then I thought maybe the @ was a schwa, and p@ was a word meaning 'goodbye' in some language I wasn't familiar with. But the real answer isn't bad either -- I know exactly the type of bow Glenn means, because I do the same thing. ;>

[Glenn]

Eodrakken, I really like your thoughts on the jackdaw language. A number of authors have created languages for animals (Richard Adams' Watership Down is an example, and Diane Duane created a few bits of cat language in her books, mostly for fun), but almost none have tried to base them on what the animals actually say (so to speak) and do. A real animal language, in most cases, would be as much body language, scent, etc. as spoken sounds. Just try to think of a race with human-level intelligence that communicated that way.

(I think a few writers have tried to tackle that challenge, BTW; certainly some have tried to play with gestures and body language. Harry Harrison's dinosaur-descended Yilani in West of Eden used a combination of words and standard body postures to convey ideas, although Harrison only created a few words and phrases for them.
A real animal language, however, would be another thing entirely...)

p@ (a deep bow with a flourish),
Glenn

P.S. I had no idea that my little "p@" had attracted such curiousity; good thing I finally explained it, no? From a group of language fanciers, however, I probably shouldn't have expected anything else.

[pne]

Y'know, I wanted to ask about that p@. I always thought it meant 'peace.'

That's what I always thought, too. (One "obvious" connection is Verdurian p? "peace", which is pretty close -- and its accusative p? even closer.)

[Jaaaaaa]

Funny, I never even noticed the p@...