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This is a fun way to learn about language (which I have a love and hate relationship with) philosophy (which I tend to dig).
A language can be thought to contain four levels, corresponding to four features of human languages: sign, structure, semantics and pragmatics. While an alien language might not share all these features, it’s helpful to know what they are before we venture into extraterrestrial strangeness.
They consider that an alien language's levels might be very different, have more levels, and/or might be missing one or more levels like semantics.
The language of an alien species who can communicate telepathically, for example, will not have the first level of signs. Aliens who have the cognitive capacity to remember an infinite number of signs (eg, a name) – each standing for a distinct meaning – would have no use for the second level of structure. Human languages, by contrast, have a structure because, despite our limited memory and cognitive abilities, it helps us create infinitely many sentences using finite elements.
Alien modes of communication may also have additional levels, ones that we cannot yet foresee. Perhaps there is an affective level that can encode how exactly one feels – say, the nature and intensity of one’s pain. Or a phenomenal level that can encode qualitative experiences, such as an apple’s redness.
An extraterrestrial language that lacks the third, semantic level would be particularly alien: one whose elements are not ‘about’ anything. Its words do not refer to objects nor are its sentences true or false descriptions of the world. Creatures that use such a language would be causal mechanisms that hook up with the world by way of environmental inputs – eg, smell, temperature or radiation – to produce resultant outputs. ‘Communication’ between such creatures may be a series of causal transactions: a stimulus from one causing a response in another, much like how hormones work in our bodies.
It reminded me of Gibberink which they mention briefly:
Even machines can employ signs, such as the high-pitched sounds of Gibberink, a language that some artificial intelligences use to interact.
Also, how incomprehensible super intelligent beings might be. Especially because this is wrong:
Human languages, by contrast, have a structure because, despite our limited memory and cognitive abilities, it helps us create infinitely many sentences using finite elements.
Infinity is much larger than a lot and our words may produce a lot of sentences but not most of the infinity of them. Just like our finite intelligence may produce a lot of imagination but not most of it.
It reminds me of the Heptapod alien language from Netflix movie "Arrival”. Their language looks like a multi-layered, circular logogram that conveys every meaning all at once within the circle, unlike human language where letters form words and words to form sentences in a linear sequence.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b OP 9h
That’s discussed in the opening paragraph.
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That’s discussed in the opening paragraph.
Damn, I didn't even bother to click the link.
Still, if Heptapod is real, learning it is fascinating as it fundamentally changes how we process information and experience reality. Instead of viewing time as a strict sequence of past, present, and future, it allows us to perceive time as a unified whole, opening up an entirely new realm of understanding.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 7h
Instead of viewing time as a strict sequence of past, present, and future
I wonder what the author would think of the lack of tense in language. They'd probably categorize it as a semantic difference.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford 23h
This whole premise is hilarious. I mean, yeah... of course they would likely be strange. I mean, our whole idea around aliens is likely so far off language of course would be way off too.
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