How Linguistics Can Help You Part 3: Syntax
After a bit of a break, I’m happy to bring you the continuation of my series, which is intended to make Linguistics user-friendly for writers by relating linguistics topics to the use of created languages in science fiction and fantasy.
I’m sure you’ve all heard the word “syntax,” if not in grammar contexts then perhaps in computer programming! Syntax is the study of how sentences are put together.
Part of syntax is word order. This is the one everyone fears because it often involves diagramming sentences. Actually, one of my most intense and wonderful classes was Syntax 1 at UC Santa Cruz. We put together a set of rules for how to create the sentences of English, based entirely on example sentences given to us by our teacher, Professor Sandy Chung (who totally rocks, by the way). Each time we thought we had it, she’d throw us another sentence that didn’t fit, and the rule set evolved. While this doesn’t reflect the most advanced theoretical knowledge on syntax today, it certainly acquainted us with critical questions in the study of syntax.
So how is syntax useful for science fiction and fantasy writers?
First, consider Yoda. He doesn’t use typical English syntax. We know this. Yet we can still understand him. I always figured he was a native speaker of some other language and that affected how he could speak the common tongue – but my husband says he never thought of that, and he thought Yoda was just quirky.
Be that as it may, one of the things you can do by altering syntax is give a feeling of dialect, or of a foreign accent. The key here is to keep it all consistent. If it’s inconsistent it will feel weird, and might be construed as an error.
So how do you keep it consistent? Track your subject/verb/object order, and track your phrase types.
In English we use SVO (subject-verb-object) word order: I hit him: I=S, hit=V, him=O.
In Japanese they use SOV (subject-object-verb) word order. boku ga kare o utta : boku=I (for boys)=S, kare=he=O, utta=hit=V
World languages have quite a variety of orders. The Atlas of Languages gives the following list:
SVO: English, Finnish, Chinese, Swahili
SOV: Hindi, Turkish, Japanese
VSO: Classic Arabic, Welsh, Samoan
VOS: Malagasay (Madagascar), Tzotzil (a Mayan language of C.Amer.)
OSV: Kabardian (Caucasus)
OVS: Hixkaryana (a Carib language of N. Brazil)
All the permutations are there, though the object-first languages are definitely fewer. There are even twists to this pattern, in that some languages don’t conceptualize parts of speech the same way, for example treating adjectives the same way as verbs. For alien languages, who knows? They might not even conceptualize subject and object and verb the way we do – in which case it might be tough to write out their language in the story! If your protagonist is a human and is allowed to be confused, this may not be a problem.
Some languages have freer word order than English. Take for example Latin or Japanese. This is a place where phrase syntax (in the Japanese case) or morphology (in the Latin case) can allow you greater freedom.
In Japanese, the subject and object are marked by particles, special words that come directly after the nouns they apply to and tell you their role in the sentence. With your words marked like that, you can scramble the phrases up a bit and still get meaning out of it.
In Latin, morphology provides case suffixes. Case suffixes essentially play the same role as the Japanese particles, and by labeling the word’s role directly, allow more freedom for altering word order.
Play around with it. Yoda shows us that we can understand a lot of different ways of putting a sentence together, provided that we know enough to track each noun’s role in the action at hand. You might also want to run it by your friends to make sure it’s comprehensible! When I work with alien languages I very often play around with syntax to give my English an alien-language flavor – but with each of my two most recent stories, I’ve had to do a round of revisions in which I took my alterations and made them more user-friendly.
At this point you may notice that I’ve been talking about altering English syntax within a story to imply the structure of another language. I do this a lot because I like to write in alien point of view, and yet the story has to be written in English if I want people to enjoy it. The same syntactic principles apply if you want to write sentences in a created language – but I’m guessing this is going to happen less often in writing a story than will the use of English for implication. I have written a song in one of my created languages, but I don’t imagine it will do more than sit in an appendix, since putting the entire thing in the story as Tolkien did isn’t quite my style.
Now, go forth and have fun with syntax!
The syntactic fluidity you mention for Latin is equally true for many Indoeuropean languages, because they are inflected and can denote direct object/indirect object/subject by case.
Along these lines, I have an amusing anecdote to share: About twelve years ago, when I was writing To Seek Out New Life, I got a kick out of reading in Wired magazine that Klingon sentence construction (OVS) is unique and never encountered on Earth.
I wrote to them that, actually, such word order is commonplace even among our familiar Indo-European group — Greek, Russian, German (the latter in main clauses, where V has to be in the middle but O and S can be switched). I pointed out that, in fact, Klingon syntax and grammar are rather similar to that found in British Border ballads and in Elizabethan rhetoric (“Away to her father sped she”), perhaps not a bad choice for swashbuckling barbarians. The Wired people were good sports — they published my letter.
Well, cool of them to publish the letter! I think they were probably just happy to get the facts. Marc Okrand was definitely trying to get out of the norm with Klingon, but it’s all relative. BTW I love the swashbuckling example!
Glad you liked it! But come to think of it, even in contemporary English syntax the order can vary for emphasis: “His award I left for last!” (OSV) and, of course, the mantra of the Galactica remake, “So say we all!” (“O”VS — like Elizabethan royal speeches and, well, Klingon!)
Athena, if it couldn’t, I’m sure we’d all have a much tougher time playing with syntax to express the alien.
Very true! Although I was being playful, per Kay’s instructions. While we’re on the topic, I find Yoda terminally annoying for reasons that include but go beyond his tortured syntax, as I discuss here:
We Must Love One Another or Die: A Critique of Star Wars
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2005/20051003/star-wars-a.shtml
Times like these I wish I was able to publish stories and articles here in more than one language.
There are even twists to this pattern, in that some languages don’t conceptualize parts of speech the same way, for example treating adjectives the same way as verbs.
If you’re taking requests, Juliette, I’d like to hear more about this and other “exotic” grammars, either here or on your blog. (Sorry, I’m afraid the S-V-O ordering story I already know.)
Better yet, do you have examples of your invented languages on your blog? (I couldn’t easily find them.) I’d love to see you explicate one of them, especially one that is most non-Indoeuropean…
There is a recent book that discusses what we touch upon here, “Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages” by Guy Deutscher. What he says is obvious to people who aren’t monolingual, but most Americans will find it enlightening.
Deutscher essentially advocates the weak version of the Shapir-Whorf hypothesis (like the anthropic principle, the strong version is simply wrong, the weak version almost a tautology — in the case of Shapir-Whorf, that language shapes our thinking process; in the case of the anthropic principle, that our universe has parameters that allow our existence).
For the sake of completeness, I should briefly lay out the strong versions of both hypotheses. For Shapir-Whorf, it is that languages determine our ability to form concepts (for example, that we cannot think of something for which our language has no term — obviously false, as witnessed by scientific discoveries); for the anthropic principle, that the parameters of our universe were made so that we can exist (equivalent to positing an actively interfering deity).
Also, if anyone is interested, I have created a language for my Koredháni culture (shown briefly in Planetfall), borrowing characteristics from Greek, Polynesian and Arabic/Hebrew. Here are examples that show inflection, number and such-like things:
Dhi voréni hanír se tíhan, ir anéh.
I will be waiting to hear your story, my girl (daughter).
Éri vóryen, ir kethán…
Wait for me, my heart…
Dohéni, iré ketháni.
Be still, my hearts. (“my dears”)
(For those worried about pollution of SF/F by “emo” tropes, please note that the endearment “my heart” is common in many languages including Greek, Russian, German and French)
Ooh, Calvin, great idea! I suppose I should explain my own languages on my blog, though, rather than here. This was a pretty basic syntax discussion, but it would be interesting to extend it. Just for a quick addition here, the most interesting thing about Japanese for me was not just that it was SOV, but that it was what linguists call “head-final.” That means that the “head” of every type of phrase comes at the end. The noun comes at the end of the noun phrase, the adjective at the end of the adjective phrase, the preposition at the end of the prepositional phrase (or reasonable equivalent thereof!) It’s a more extensive reversal than you see in German. So if you were to take the English sentence, “I kicked the ball over the fence my neighbor built” and convert it to Japanese word order, it would be, “I, the ball, my neighbor built fence over kicked.”
Calvin, I have a post up on my blog about the structure of Aurrel, the alien language from my Analog story “Cold Words” (and how I designed it). You may find it interesting – thanks for the suggestion!
Thanks for your additional comment, Andrea, and for the example! I should note, syntax is not my greatest tool for creating alternate languages – more often it’s morphology, or pragmatics (which I’ll get to soon). The biggest reason for this is that big/thorough syntactic differences create significant barriers to comprehension, so they don’t lend themselves well to use for alien point of view.