{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1237", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 1237, "subject": "Cursing in Old Solar", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1998-10-30T14:44:58+00:00", "last": "1998-10-31T15:58:18+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan Parmenter", "address": "dan at lec.com" }, "date": "1998-10-30T14:44:58+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Cursing in Old Solar", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: John Bishop \nAs a BA in Linguistics, I've not yet seen SF which gets Linguistics\nright at all; the tendancy is to go wild on the wildest version of\nWhorf' hypothesis, or to get some basic concept wrong. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Actually, I thought that Wolfe's treatment of the Ascians' language\nwas a wonderful refutation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (aka\n\"linguisitc relativity\" which most people have encountered in some\nform or other, either through anecdotes about the number of \"Eskimo\"\nwords for snow or Hopi conceptions of time - roughly stated as\n\"language determines worldview\"). Severian, in a rare moment of\nlucidity, concludes that the Ascian prisoner's thoughts are in no way\nlimited by being forced to speak entirely from stock phrases and that\nhe can express any human thought through his language, inlcuding\nthings which have never been expressed, original thoughts. This also\nserves the purpose of showing us that the Ascian leaders have failed\nin their Orwellian attempt at controlling the masses. Surely Wolfe\nwas referring to Orwell, but I'm half-convinced that he may have had\nsome exposure to the S-W hypothesis and some of the standard arguments\nagainst it. For a good source of these arguments, check out THE\nLANGUAGE INSTINCT by Steven Pinker.\n\nOf course Star Trek handled this same concept rather well in the\n\"Darmok\" episode, which for my money is probably one of the better\npopular treatments of this sort of thing. The premise was of our\nCaptain Picard marooned on a planet with some humanoid alien who even\nthrough the Universal Translator seemed to be spouting gibberish. It\nturns out that all conversation among these people is expressed in\nstock phrases from their \"national epic\". Picard figures it out,\nhilarity ensues, I think there's probably some shooting at some point.\nGood episode.\n\nI believe that Suzette Haden Elgin is a linguist who has written SF\nthat touches on these issues. I haven't read any of it.\n\nSapir-Whorf is controversial, though linguists consider it essentially\na dead issue. It is perhaps out of the scope of this mailing list to\ngo into all of the different views and their rationales." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: Michael Straight \nWhat about C.S. Lewis's \"Out of the Silent Planet\"? The main character is\na philologist and a significant portion of the book is about language\nlearning. Does that count as \"linguistics\"?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It certainly involves language, if not linguistics as it is understood\nnow. I tend to view Lewis' linguistics with about the same\nseriousness as I view his biology. A philologist hero is of course a\nwonderful idea and I have nothing but praise for the series, but I\ndon't look to it for serious discussions of language." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "There is Wolfe's whole \"I'm just translating this old manuscript from the\nfuture\" conceit, which is fairly old hat (except maybe the \"from the\nfuture\" part. Have other authors done that before? Wolfe seems to play\nit pretty much as a joke.) " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Don't forget that Wolfe even claims to have photographed the era's\nremains! If the future influences the past, I suppose that means he\nbrought his camera on a vacation to Argentina! So yes, I suppose he\nwinks a few times, but doesn't necessarily treat it as a joke.\n\nYr pal,\nShellac (computational linguist)" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Peter Stephenson", "address": "pws at ibmth.df.unipi.it" }, "date": "1998-10-31T15:58:18+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Cursing in Old Solar", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Dan Parmenter wrote:\nOf course Star Trek handled this same concept rather well in the\n\"Darmok\" episode, which for my money is probably one of the better\npopular treatments of this sort of thing. The premise was of our\nCaptain Picard marooned on a planet with some humanoid alien who even\nthrough the Universal Translator seemed to be spouting gibberish. It\nturns out that all conversation among these people is expressed in\nstock phrases from their \"national epic\". Picard figures it out,\nhilarity ensues, I think there's probably some shooting at some point.\nGood episode." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I enjoyed it too, and it certainly seems relevant to the Ascians, but\nput in this context the idea struck me as utterly implausible. I\ncan't understand how a space-faring culture could ever get off the\nground if instead of `Captain, the dilithium crystals canna take it'\nthey have to say something like `Laforge, crawling around in a flimsy\nstudio tunnel again'. Well, all right, they do that every episode so\nit's completely transparent after all, but think of any mildly\ntechnical sentence you like and try to construct a parallel for it\nusing only references to ancient epics. (`And Arjuna said: \"How then\nshall I rig the transporter beam so that the army of the Pandavas\narrives in the hold of the freighter without the phaselock undergoing\nquantum degradation, O Krishna?\"...')\n\nMaybe it's another example of what I was talking about a couple of\nweeks ago with respect to Wolfe's science: the idea of the Ascian\nlanguage works perfectly in the context Wolfe uses it, exactly because\nyou're never shown an example where an Ascian is saying `You two go\nround the other side of the hill, wait till exactly 11:35 and take out\nthe two sentries without making any noise'.\n\nMaybe, too, the trick in Star Trek is different, maybe if it works\nthere it's because there is such a limited repertoire of things you\ncan do: beam up, beam down, lock on tractor beam, set phasers to stun,\npick up strange vibrations (Troy only), engage, ..." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Peter Stephenson Tel: +39 050 844536\nWWW: http://www.ifh.de/~pws/\nDipartimento di Fisica, Via Buonarotti 2, 56100 Pisa, Italy" } ] } ] }