Beyond Spoken Languages: Alien Languages!

Haspelmath writes on concepts such as lexemes, morphemes, and word families. Lexemes, or words not including variations, are what society uses in dictionaries. In contrast are word-forms, such as lived and lives, that make up a paradigm. Haspelmath also dived into the hierarchal structures within compounds themselves— compounds being two or more lexemes, such as the word lipstick. Haspelmath used tree diagrams to help explain the different meanings of the word undoable— one where do and able are closer together to make “un-doable”, and un and do are closer together to make “undo-able”. Atkins and Levin discussed near-synonyms and if the massive electronic corpus can help explain what makes them different linguistically. He describes how transitive use was actually inconclusive and that “no corpus can ever offer negative evidence” (87). Lastly, in Slobin’s “The Many Ways to Search for a Frog”, he explains how languages differ in rhetorical style and focuses on motion: the manner of motion, the path of motion, and the grounds in motion events.

I found Atkins and Levin’s discussion of the electronic corpus very intriguing. They explained that the electronic corpus has opened far more data and examples to linguists— research can expand in ways it has never before. However, the almost absurd amount of data available makes work for linguists all the more hard— it puts the task upon them to explain every set of data and every sentence. He explained that more has been learned, but paper dictionaries are not getting bigger, therefore things are being left out. I had never really considered the impact digital data would have on the study of Linguistics.

Slobin’s mentioning of topics beyond spoken languages was also very interesting to me. He focused on American Sign Language (ASL) and how one’s hands, face, and body actually add an entire realm of possibilities for language— especially for Slobin in how motion is expressed. This made me think about a trailer I watched recently for the movie “ARRIVAL” coming out in November [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTNJtEXYsyw]. The movie is about an alien invasion, but it seems to follow a linguist who has to go in and try to understand these aliens’ language— much like doing fieldwork as we learned in class! The aliens’ language, however, is not spoken and is entirely done as circle art. Previewed in the trailer, each spike and added design element to the circle might mean a different word, it is almost as if the possibilities for the aliens’ language, and perhaps how motion is depicted, are far greater than spoken languages. The aliens might be able to physically show vibration in the shape of the swipe meant for the word vibrate— something humans, aside from ASL, are unable to do.