A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)
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Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)
#2One big issue with communicating with aliens is sensory differences with humans. Humans perceive a sound range, the so-called visibl spectrum and certain limited smells (compared to man animals). Even here there are animals that perceive different spectra and the magnetic field.
What's more human communication relies on a basic common wiring (e.g. Paus s between words seem to be basically universal regardless of language and culture).
So if an alien landed here what if they didn't perceive sound at all and saw only in the ultraviolet range? I find this subject fascinating and it's certainly rich fodder for sci-fi.
Anyway the article asks how the interviewee would handle this situation without touching on this far more pressing problem.
Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)
#3One big issue with communicating with aliens is sensory differences with humans. Humans perceive a sound range, the so-called visibl spectrum and certain limited smells (compared to man animals). Even here there are animals that perceive different spectra and the magnetic field. What's more human communication relies on a basic common wiring (e.g. Paus s between words seem to be basically universal regardless of lang…
Later in the article when describing a practical protocol for a first-contact scenario, they explain this problem as discovering the 'modality' of communication.
Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)
#4One big issue with communicating with aliens is sensory differences with humans. Humans perceive a sound range, the so-called visibl spectrum and certain limited smells (compared to man animals). Even here there are animals that perceive different spectra and the magnetic field. What's more human communication relies on a basic common wiring (e.g. Paus s between words seem to be basically universal regardless of lang…
>So if an alien landed here what if they didn't perceive sound at all and saw only in the ultraviolet range?
If they were capable of interstellar travel this would be a trivial problem to solve in comparison so yeah highly implausible plots.
Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)
#5Perhaps they should take the time to make a few distinctions in this interview:
1. Perceptions 2. Constructs 3. Language
For a creature that doesn't have sight at all, they literally can't talk about certain concepts.
Now, does the creature distinguish between objects and actions? If they do, they have a basis to distinguish between Nouns and Verbs.
Finally, humans might be hard wired for some aspects of language. It would be a huge coincidence if aliens had the same hard wiring. (For instance, they could have evolved to give their children negative evidence, rather than pre-constrain grammars.)
Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)
#6One big issue with communicating with aliens is sensory differences with humans. Humans perceive a sound range, the so-called visibl spectrum and certain limited smells (compared to man animals). Even here there are animals that perceive different spectra and the magnetic field. What's more human communication relies on a basic common wiring (e.g. Paus s between words seem to be basically universal regardless of lang…
That is certainly an interesting problem, one I first saw in a Hackaday post from a few years ago [1].
Personally, I've always wondered how any aliens would interpret the Arecibo message - if they could even decode it, that is.
Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)
#7Perhaps we should first try to understand dolphin's language. Another suggestion for aliens to understand our language would be first to show then how evolution in earth has happened. Any high technology creature able to travel across the universe must have been studying some kind of evolutionary path. Perhaps studying the neurons they could infer a lot of information about how our mind interacts with the environment.
Edited: An interesting novel is The Black Cloud by Hoyle in which the author tries to establish a language between human and an intelligent extraterrestrial electromagnetic cloud.
Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)
#8Perhaps they should take the time to make a few distinctions in this interview: 1. Perceptions 2. Constructs 3. Language For a creature that doesn't have sight at all, they literally can't talk about certain concepts. Now, does the creature distinguish between objects and actions? If they do, they have a basis to distinguish between Nouns and Verbs. Finally, humans might be hard wired for some aspects of language. It…
It would indeed be a huge coincidence if humans and an extraterrestrial species had the same hard-wiring for language, but I would think it far less of a coincidence if they both had hard-wiring that was functionally broadly similar.
Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)
#9Perhaps they should take the time to make a few distinctions in this interview: 1. Perceptions 2. Constructs 3. Language For a creature that doesn't have sight at all, they literally can't talk about certain concepts. Now, does the creature distinguish between objects and actions? If they do, they have a basis to distinguish between Nouns and Verbs. Finally, humans might be hard wired for some aspects of language. It…
> For a creature that doesn't have sight at all, they literally can't talk about certain concepts.
Any intelligent species will create instruments for measurement in non-sensory regimes, so they can certainly explore those regimes.
And if you're talking about some kind of qualitative experience, it's conjecture that such experiences aren't reducible to some kind of complex third-person account.
Re: A linguist on Arrival's alien language (2016)
#10One big issue with communicating with aliens is sensory differences with humans. Humans perceive a sound range, the so-called visibl spectrum and certain limited smells (compared to man animals). Even here there are animals that perceive different spectra and the magnetic field. What's more human communication relies on a basic common wiring (e.g. Paus s between words seem to be basically universal regardless of lang…
>So if an alien landed here what if they didn't perceive sound at all and saw only in the ultraviolet range? If they were capable of interstellar travel this would be a trivial problem to solve in comparison so yeah highly implausible plots.
Well this is the somewhat depressing part: interstellar distances just seem so vast one has to wonder if it's ever going to be feasible. This is worsened by the timescales just being hopelessly long for how long we live. It seems far more likely that AIs are more viable to send than living organisms.