Alien Languages: Not Human
Contrary to Hollywood and the majority of fictional languages, alien languages are almost certainly not going to look like human ones. They’re not going to have the same sounds, the same word orders, or the same way of solving problems like time, direction, and ownership. Why? Because human DNA and culture help determine what human languages look like, and aliens will, by definition, not share that background.
That’s not to say there won’t be similarities, though. Because language is a communication system and therefore has to convey information efficiently, there are some facts that won’t change.
On Neurobiology
The ability to use language will be coded in the aliens’ genes. Either the aliens evolved language and have basic linguistic structures in their brains at birth, or every individual has to independently invent the language from scratch. With humans, we call this nativism and it applies to a whole range of mental traits, not just language.
A corollary of having language hard-wired is that other brain “structures” will affect what the language(s) look like, because everything’s likely using the same neural pathways. Unfortunately, we’re still trying to figure out exactly where language overlaps with other pathways in humans, so I can’t give examples that aren’t personal conjecture. Let’s just say that if an alien fundamentally perceives the world differently, its language is going to reflect that difference.
A second corollary is that members of the same species can learn any language spoken by that species, because the neural pathways will be the same. (A different species, such as humans, could have tremendous, even insurmountable difficulties learning these languages, and the aliens, ours.)
A species that has multiple languages, or has had its language evolve significantly, is going to have “encoded” more linguistic structures in its brain than any one language uses. This means that languages spoken by the same species do not have to be similar, and that even related languages can have big differences because a different element of code was chosen. French, Spanish, Catalan, and Romanian were all Latin two thousand years ago.
On Organization
An alien language will be organized, because without syntax and/or word building, there’s no way of knowing who did what to whom where when, meaning that communication’s negated or at least significantly hindered. An efficient language is going to get the point across as simply as possible, and meaning comes across much easier if the order of information is predictable. This means there’ll be rules for word order or word formation, possibly both. However, those rules may look nothing like even the least common patterns in human languages. A sentence transliterated as “the bit dog man the” could be perfectly acceptable.
Ordering sounds may or may not occur. Why order sounds? Because some carry over distances better than others, and it’s easier to hear soft-loud-soft or loud-loud even at close range than it is to hear soft-soft or soft-softer-soft. It’s also possible, but not certain, that there will be vastly different sounds in the same language (b vs. ee vs. sh) because again, it’s easier to distinguish words when they’re not all variations of tkktt. This is, of course, assuming that aliens will be sensitive to variations in amplitude and frequency, like humans, and that they’ll use sound for communication.
There will likely be ways to combine and recombine “clauses” and “phrases” to form different patterns with different meanings—reporting speech, for instance, or passive voice. Again, this is to simplify communication. Why create an entirely new string of words or sounds when a good one’s already been laid out? Does anyone need an entirely new string of sounds for every possible sentence?
On Culture and Language Change
On Earth, languages change over time and differ between areas. The longer a group of speakers is separated from another, or the longer they’re exposed to other linguistic influences, the more distinct their speech will be from other speakers of their language. The changes are somewhat counteracted by socio-political pressures (upward mobility, government mandates, education, and so on), but dialects and new languages do develop. This will likely happen on other planets too.
Because language is a means of communication, it’s not going to develop in places where people have no need to communicate. Lone wanderers will not create language. Tribes will.
Finally, and I know this has be said elsewhere before this: aliens will have words for concepts and objects important to them and in their world, but not for unfamiliar concepts and objects. For those, they will need to invent or borrow words.
On Differences
Humans have two kinds of language: spoken languages, which use sound waves, and gestural (sign) languages, which use light waves and images. Other species on our planet communicate through chemicals (insects, plants, fungi), though those systems aren’t nearly complex enough to be called languages. Aliens also won’t be limited to the same systems as we are, because they’ll come from a different evolutionary path. Taste, touch, and smell are equally possible, along with systems based on abilities humans don’t have, such as telepathy or electric impulses.
Some of these possible systems aren’t going to allow for the same kinds of segmentation human languages enjoy. Trying to describe “speech sound” to a scent-speaker or “word” to a telepath is going to be difficult.
Aliens aren’t going have the same kinds of syntax, the same kinds of word structures, or the same kinds of grammatical elements (-prepositions, cases, gender…) as humans do. They have a different culture and biological background and can therefore develop other ways of referring to the world and indicating relationships. Perhaps it’s not location that’s important, but moment in time. There’s be no word for “on”, but there’d be words or affixes for any time relationship you could think of.
Societies influence languages. Words, ideas, and ways of speaking can become taboo and be edited out of the language. Governments can use education and the law to enforce certain forms over others. Societies that lack moral codes or have a highly sophisticated concept of direction are going to have whole sets of words, structures, and solutions that other societies won’t. Similarly, living in five dimensions is going to alter your worldview.
Summary Caveats
Sentient aliens don’t need a language. Communication, certainly, but not a language. Civilizations will most likely have language, though, because of the distances and degree of communication required.
It’s entirely possible that an alien civilization could develop with solely non-linguistic communication or a proto-language. I’m too steeped in human linguistics to see how, but I can’t discount the possibility.
When I use words like “word” and “speaker”, I mean the regular definition as well as the parallel meaning for languages not based on sound waves and the human brain.
Because I am taking human languages as my reference point whether I like it or not, I will have introduced biases into this essay based on what’s logical and definite to me. An alien (possibly another human) could read what I’ve written and prove me wrong.
It’s my hope that by delineating what humans will recognize in alien languages, I’ll inspire a completely non-human language. If we’re not limiting ourselves to human-like biologies, why stick to human-like languages?
Bibliography and Links
Non-human communication:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biocommunication_(science)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interspecies_communication
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_language
Interesting constructed languages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solresol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravic
A book:
Jackendoff, Ray. Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution. Oxford University Press, 2003.
[...] Alien Languages: Not Human — A nice squib from Science in My Fiction. I don’t quite agree with all of it, but a good read. As Wittgenstein said, “If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.” [...]
My favorite treatment of language in science fiction is in Hellspark by Janet Kagan (1988). The alien language is so vastly different than any human language that the humans can not even recognize the aliens as sentient, sapient beings. The aliens lack the physical structures to produce human vocalizations, and humans lack the physical structures to mimic the alien visual displays.
(I suppose technically I shouldn’t call the sprookjes “aliens”–because humans went to their world, the sprookjes are natives, and the humans are aliens.)
Great summary of important points. Between being multilingual and a neuroscientist I’ve been thinking of these topics all my life and I dedicated a whole chapter in my book to them (Rosetta Stones and Black Monoliths).
I don’t think that either of these two points is true:
“An efficient language is going to get the point across as simply as possible, and meaning comes across much easier if the order of information is predictable.”
Language, like all biological and cultural constructs, is not built for efficiency — streamlining is not among its concerns; and rigid syntactical order is the norm only for uninflected languages (aka English).
“A species that has multiple languages, or has had its language evolve significantly, is going to have “encoded” more linguistic structures in its brain than any one language uses.”
The human brain makes only two distinctions: language(s) learned concomitantly with development, and language(s) learned afterward.
“Lone wanderers will not create language. Tribes will.”
Not necessarily true. Transmitting knowledge requires a medium.
And, contrary to many SF/F scenarios (including my own fiction — mea culpa!), ixnay on the telepathy except in its “weak” manifestation of empathy.
Thanks, Athena. The interplay between language and neurology (and culture) has fascinated me for a long time too.
Re: efficiency: I agree, language isn’t the most efficient system it could possibly be, but it’s nowhere close to the degree of inefficiency it could have. We could have a language consisting of a single sound, with absolutely no way of differentiating words from each other. We could have a language where any sound could replace any other sound without changing the words’ meanings, or have so many affixes for gender, number, tense, aspect, part of speech, and so on that we’d forget what we were talking about before we finished the first word. Language is efficient to the extent that it gets the point across without an excessive amount of mental effort. We do see languages streamlining themselves over time.
I’m not necessarily talking about syntax when I talk about predictable orders. Every language has, at least to an extent, a predictable order (to a trained linguist or native speaker). Any language with large numbers of affixes also has rules for where those affixes go in relation to the others, so that “singular-first.person-object-verb-past-progressive-conditional” and “conditional-object-past-verb-first.person-progressive-singular” don’t co-occur. I readily admit to not being highly familiar with every language or language family out there, but I’m pretty sure there are languages with a more fluid syntax that have special words or morphemes to denote subjects and objects, and yes, there are some that rely heavily on context.
Your follow-up comment to my statement about multiple linguistics structures actually ties into the point I was trying to make: that our brains aren’t designed solely for one language, and that we can learn others even if they’re vastly different from each other. Over the however many years our species (or ancestors) have had speech, we’ve come to accommodate multiple word orders, sounds, grammars, etc. We may not use all of them all the time, and they may have happened as an offshoot of something else, but we have access if we need them. I don’t think aliens in a similar situation would differ too much from that.
Someone with absolutely no need to transmit knowledge will not invent a medium to transmit it with. They may not even conceive that there could be a need to transmit knowledge.
I know telepathy wouldn’t work for humans, but what about an alien race whose brains could send out strong impulses, and who had evolved a way of picking up those impulses? Perfectly willing to be proven wrong here. Telepathy was an example I used because it was “out there” by human standards.
We could have a language consisting of a single sound, with absolutely no way of differentiating words from each other.
Hmm. That’s actually a hilarious episode from “The Tick”
Anassa, I believe that syntax is the allowable ordering(s) of a language — by definition (the etymology of the word’s Hellenic root means “putting side by side”). Also, languages sometimes streamline themselves over time, but sometimes become more complex. The direction of that can never be predicted.
In terms of capacity for learning languages, it’s true that we are born with the ability to potentially learn them all. However, over time that ability dwindles, which is why people who learn languages later in life have ineradicable accents.
My comment was also more specific; I wanted to convey that the way we process language(s) we learn as infant differs from the way we process language(s) we learn after infancy — regardless of acquisition age (once we’re past the critical window) or language complexity. You can see that in brain scans. The two categories use overlapping but distinct brain regions.
As for telepathy, sending out impulses requires a carrier and/or medium and, contrary to John Eccles’ theory, there are no such things as psychons. I’m afraid that telepathy will remain in the fictional realm. Not that it should matter to writers!
“I’m pretty sure there are languages with a more fluid syntax that have special words or morphemes to denote subjects and objects”
Japanese does this. If Juliette wanders by, she can explicate far better than I can.
I suspect that even in languages with more “fluid” syntax, there remain specific connotations with ordering. Athena might be able to address this in Greek.
I can give an alternate musicality. In English, musicality plays no lexical role, but it can heavily freight sentences with emotional shading. (This is partly why text-only communications can so often run around.) For example, you can say the sentence “Steven Hawking is a brilliant scientist,” with a musical phrasing that indicates absolute certainty, or that indicates sarcasm and directly undermines the entire meaning. (It is no small irony that Hawking himself has had this ability to shade through musicality taken away from him.)
Chinese languages, which use musicality (tones) as a lexical instrument–the word “ma” has different meanings depending on its tone–actually have grammatical particles that can indicate these kinds of shading (or so I’ve read–I’m no expert).
I suspect (and I don’t think you were denying this in any way, Anassa; there’s only so much room in these posts!) that in languages with more flexible positional structure that position nonetheless can play an important role in shading meaning.
I particularly appreciate the link to Kelen because it partially addresses a question I’ve long had–can we even *imagine* a language without the verb/noun categorization? (Completely unrelated, I note that Kelen’s script looks a lot like the Devanagari.) I’m going to have to read more at that link. Thanks!
It seems to me that Kelen’s relationals are verbs by another names, since they denote transition or action.
Yes, that had occurred to me, which is why I said Kelen only partially addresses the question. I think the answer (if there is one, and I am not sure) it would not be to simply eliminate verbs (or nouns) but to find a different boundary. No idea what that could be.
I suspect the answer to your question is no, even for radically different language structures or information transmission media.
The difference between Kelen’s relationals and verbs as we know them is that they are a closed class – there are only four of them. They are quite abstract relationships as well.
Thanks for the kind words on Kelen.
Some other alien languages that you might find interesting:
Rickchik
Dritok
Fith
Another way of expressing it, might be to say that the required redundancy in human languages will take a different form – of necessity – in the languages of any alien species.
I think the bee dance would be a good example of that.
You might be interested in Inuit’s morphology and syntax. It forms very long (I’m not a student of Inuit so my knowledge of it is very cursory) and I think not uncommonly single word sentences. It just has a root word and a bunch of suffixation going on.
Anyway, you could think of computer communication as a language with one sound (and silence).
I’m jumping into this kind of late, and from a rather different perspective,* but I think this article misses an essential point—that the evolution of a linguistic capacity is going to be influenced by a species’ perception of the world, and that that perception is likely to be similar enough to the way we perceive the world that their languages will be quite like ours, at least in broad strokes.
Any alien species that we can be reasonably likely to recognize as intelligent is also likely to be similar** to us in a number of basic ways: it moves, eats, quite possibly hunts, shits, forms an “image” of the world around it (although that might be done through ultrasound or something even more exotic), senses chemicals in its environment, etc. I’d be quite happy if we found sessile lichen with a penchant for poetry on Titan, but I don’t think it’s very likely—lichen doesn’t have much to be poetic about.
A view of the world that is much like our own will influence not only the evolution of a linguistic capacity, but also the way that the individual languages develop later. Many of the things that are (too) often seen as “innate” in human language are simply not—they’re byproducts of the way in which our brain views the world. Take, for example, the issue of nouns and verbs. These are found in every language,* and so nouns and verbs are universal, and thus “must” be hard-wired into our linguistic capacity. But is this true? We know from a variety of experiments that people actually *perceive* the world as agents doing things, even at a non-linguistic level (in visual experiments of attention, for example).
What’s more, there is a rather strong argument to be made that the reason SVO word order (subject-verb-object, like English) and SOV word order (like Japanese and part of German) are the most common in the world’s languages is not because of an accident of brain evolution, but because humans see the world as agents (S’s) doing things (V’s) to others (O’s)—or, alternatively, as agents acting on others in V kinds of ways. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, because it’s a *good* way to view the world if you live in an ecosystem which has competition and predation (which is likely all of them). If you view events as simply happening to you and others, all of which are unpredictable, you are likely to sit around and mope until a lion or a @xsXCC^^7 comes and eats you, and you’re unlikely to make the mental leap of using a rock to smash a nut.
Having said all that, we’re still left with a lot of room for things to be wildly different: aliens might communicate via patterns on their skin, like the cuttlefish, or via scent, like the ant. Dancing seems popular as a language channel in sci-fi, although I doubt it would work very well for a tool-using species (it’s hard to fix a carburetor and have a conversation at the same time if your words involve flailing about). Scent is often derided as sticking around too long and being too easily dispersed to work for language, but I think that says more about the human (in)ability to smell than it does about anything else. One could even imagine a being evolving on a planet with a strong magnetic field which creates tiny oscillations in said field to send out a signal, just as we use tiny waves of air.
Regardless of the fun of speculation, I imagine whatever it is that we do find will be far more alien—and thus, far more awesome—than anything we manage to cook up.
(*I should probably note that I come from a functional linguistics background, and not a generative one.)
(**I’m using this in a very broad sense. Cuttlefish and millipedes and lizards and ants are all “similar” to humans in the sense I mean here.)
(***Or not, depending on which definition you use; but I’m sticking with the most basic: nouns are things, verbs are actions. This isn’t perfect, of course, but it’s accessible.)
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