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From: tob@world.std.com
Subject: Re: SF & Language - Minimums
Message-ID: <E70IKy.Bx4@world.std.com>
Sender: tob@world.std.com (Tom Breton)
Reply-To: tob@world.std.com
Organization: BREnterprises
References: <01bc265a$a239f270$275ee8cd@sal9000>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 02:50:58 GMT
X-Posted-By: My own casual posting program
Lines: 47

(late, late answer)

"John D. Gwinner" <gwinner@northnet.org> wrote:
>   In conjunction with the recent thread on SF & Language, I've been
> wondering if something like David Brin's 'Galactic' languages has been
> worked out ...
>
>   What is the minimum vocabulary and grammar structure needed to
> communicate with aliens?  Has anyone done any serious work on this?  (SETI
> might have, I'm thinking).
>

The minimum vocabulary depends so much on what you want to say and what
they are capable of understanding.

In a way, so does the grammar, but I am assuming that you need your
grammar to be the Turing-machine-equivalent that any natural language
is. A grammar can be extremely simple and still as powerful as any
natural language. This is proved by my pet project of some years past,

  <a href=http://world.std.com/~tob/allnoun.htm > AllNoun, </a>

which has only one part of speech, a little punctuation, and a couple of
rules, yet can express anything natural language can. All vocabulary is
atomic - no agglutinazation at all. Almost all the stuff you expect in a
grammar (tenses, possessives, imperatives) is done in vocabulary.
Borrowed vocabulary, that is, since the vocabulary construction aspect
of conlanging didn't appeal to me.

NB: Unlike Glosa, AllNoun does not "piggyback" on the syntax of a
pre-existing language. The semantic relations between elements are
determined by the syntax alone.

I know of two other people (Jacques Guy on this thread being one, also
Paul Doudna) who independently constructed similar grammars. It may be
the case that if your hypothetical aliens have constructed a similar
grammar, communication would be a lot easier than if each side has to
guess which word modifies which and how, or what this new
agglutinization of apparently unrelated morphemes is supposed to mean.
Exchanging vocabulary can be done piecemeal, and with a lot less of the
"I just don't think that way" dynamic. Alien brains are probably not
divided into Broca'a area and Wernicke's area, but they probably, like
us, handle the ubiquitous, recurring parts of their language (grammar)
less consciously than the specific semantics (vocabulary).

        Tom

