Timeline for A believable (and not irritating) proto-language
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
29 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 20, 2017 at 9:57 | comment | added | candied_orange | What a smurfy question. :) | |
| Apr 20, 2017 at 8:00 | comment | added | Anton Sherwood | “For instance, the language might only have one word for ‘danger’…” If so, it's more primitive than monkeys' different calls for ‘eagle’, ’snake’ and ‘leopard’. | |
| Apr 20, 2017 at 7:58 | comment | added | nigel222 | Research birds that talk to humans ( and are not just mimics). Alex the parrot is the most famous. Admittedly this is English, but being grasped by a creature with a brain the size of a walnut and no common ancestor with mammals for hundreds of millions of years. As close to an alien with proto-linguistic skills as we'll ever know. | |
| Apr 19, 2017 at 12:53 | history | edited | Michael Stachowsky | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Apr 19, 2017 at 9:59 | answer | added | Weckar E. | timeline score: 2 | |
| Apr 19, 2017 at 7:21 | answer | added | user3106 | timeline score: 2 | |
| Apr 19, 2017 at 6:26 | answer | added | rs232 | timeline score: 3 | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 22:13 | vote | accept | Michael Stachowsky | ||
| Apr 18, 2017 at 22:05 | comment | added | ohwilleke | You don't have to be Tolkein or the director of the Game of Thrones TV series. Your task is not to construct a complete conlang. Your task is to advance a linguistic concept in a way that a reader can grasp it enough that still feels real by example. Like a TV studio, nothing that the camera doesn't see has to be spelled out or realistic. Focus on the concepts you want to highlight (very different from a human proto-language IMHO) and not on historical accuracy or completeness. | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 21:33 | answer | added | ohwilleke | timeline score: 43 | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 21:32 | answer | added | Tom O'Daighre | timeline score: 2 | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 21:26 | comment | added | AlexP | Constructive suggestion: Why don't you use a known ancient language? Homeric Greek, possibly with reconstructed digammas? Hittite (there is a great Hittite dictionary available online)? Old Church Slavonic? Hittite would be utterly alien to most readers, although it's actually distantly related to English. For added aliennes you could apply some sound change rules to the chosen language. | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 21:17 | answer | added | T.E.D. | timeline score: 2 | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 21:16 | comment | added | AlexP | Actual known protolanguages had anything but simple grammars. Ancient languages tended to have much much more morphology than English, and also unfamiliar morphology. Dual number? Middle voice? Aorist tense? Also, a very important aspect of human language is that it can convey messages (1) about unreal things (this very question being a good example -- the readers understand that the expedition and the planet we are speaking about do not actually exist) and (2) about the message itself. And using non-standard terminology won't help you in research (inflection != intonation). | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 20:48 | answer | added | Brereton | timeline score: 6 | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 20:38 | history | edited | Michael Stachowsky | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Apr 18, 2017 at 20:30 | answer | added | Kimariesings | timeline score: 0 | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 20:04 | comment | added | Michael Stachowsky | @MadPhysicist Perhaps. The idea for this came to me while watching "Walking with Cavemen", actually. In it, there is a scene where protohumans are talking in a made up language. It's fairly obvious what they are saying in that scene, but I was amazed by the fact that we at least thought that protohumans had language. It's obvious, now that I think about it, that there must have been a gradual development of language over millions of years. Hence I thought it might be an interesting story element :-P | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 20:03 | comment | added | BrettFromLA | Mee-saw tinks dis is a good-ah question! | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 20:02 | comment | added | Mad Physicist | As a followup to @CortAmmon's comment, the good news is that you may actually come up with some truly new and therefore very interesting theories as you do your research. | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 19:42 | comment | added | Cort Ammon | I think one reason you might be stumped is that you're targeting probably the most difficult linguistic challenge imaginable: the razor fine line between having a language and not having one. We don't really know what's between apes and humans because we don't have many examples. You're really forging your own path in this region of language. It's always easy to talk about the extremes of "have a language" and "have no language." The middleground is the murky bit. | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 17:52 | answer | added | Kugel | timeline score: 3 | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 17:27 | history | edited | Michael Stachowsky | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 924 characters in body
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| Apr 18, 2017 at 17:26 | answer | added | Willk | timeline score: 8 | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 17:23 | answer | added | apaul | timeline score: 13 | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 17:15 | answer | added | Cort Ammon | timeline score: 21 | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 17:12 | answer | added | Vylix | timeline score: 9 | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 16:59 | answer | added | F1Krazy | timeline score: 6 | |
| Apr 18, 2017 at 16:03 | history | asked | Michael Stachowsky | CC BY-SA 3.0 |