Story of your life
Language
I think it’s a full-fledged, general-purpose graphical language.” (14)
Phonetic
The recording sounded vaguely like that of a wet dog shaking the water out of its fur. (2)
It doesn’t sound like they’re using a larynx to make those sounds. (3)
Oral
I heard a brief fluttering sound, and saw a puckered orifice at the top of its body vibrate; it was talking. (6)
“In their spoken language, a noun has a case marker indicating whether it’s a subject or object. In their written language, however, a noun is identified as a subject or object based on the orientation of its logogram relative to that of the verb. Here, take a look.” I pointed at one of the figures. “For instance, when ‘heptapod’ is integrated with ‘hears’ this way, with these strokes parallel, it means that the heptapod is doing the hearing.” I showed him a different one. “When they’re combined this way, with the strokes perpendicular, it means that the heptapod is being heard. This morphology applies to several verbs.
with the spoken version of these verbs, they add a prefix to the verb to express ease of manner, and the prefixes for ‘see’ and ‘hear’ are different. (14)
We made steady progress decoding the grammar of the spoken language, Heptapod A. It didn’t follow the pattern of human languages, as expected, but it was comprehensible so far: free word order, even to the extent that there was no preferred order for the clauses in a conditional statement, in defiance of a human language “universal.” It also appeared that the heptapods had no objection to many levels of center-embedding of clauses, something that quickly defeated humans. (17)
It was clear that word order meant next to nothing when speaking in Heptapod A; when asked to re- peat what it had just said, a heptapod would likely not use a different word order unless we specifically asked them not to. (22) There is no word order in their spoken language
Pictographic
One heptapod spoke, and then inserted a limb into a large socket in the pedestal; a doodle of the script, vaguely cursive, popped onto the screen. (9) The way they write
Based on first impressions, their writing appeared to be logographic. (9)
Now I realized all of them actually did contain the logogram for “heptapod” some were rotated and distorted by being combined with the various verbs, so I hadn’t recognized them at first. (11) They express different meanings through the rotation and distortion of symbols
“Their script isn’t word-divided; a sentence is written by joining the logograms for the constituent words. They join the logograms by rotating and modifying them. (11)
It didn’t appear to be writing at all; it looked more like a bunch of intricate graphic designs. The logograms weren’t arranged in rows, or a spiral, or any linear fashion. Instead, Flapper or Raspberry would write a sentence by sticking together as many logograms as needed into a giant conglomeration. (12)
This form of writing was reminiscent of primitive sign systems, which required a reader to know a message’s context in order to understand it. (12) character
a semasiographic writing system
That modulation is applicable to lots of verbs. The logogram for ‘see’ can be modulated in the same way to form ‘see clearly,’ and so can the logogram for ‘read’ and others. And changing the curve of those strokes has no parallel in their speech. (14)
It appeared that a semagram corresponded roughly to a written word in human languages: it was meaningful on its own, and in combination with other semagrams could form endless statements. We couldn’t define it precisely, but then no one had ever satisfactorily defined “word” for human languages either. When it came to sentences in Heptapod B, though, things became much more confusing. The language had no written punctuation: Its syntax was indicated in the way the semagrams were combined, and there was no need to indicate the cadence of speech. There was certainly no way to slice out subject-predicate pairings neatly to make sentences. A “sentence” seemed to be whatever number of semagrams a heptapod wanted to join together; the only difference between a sentence and a paragraph, or a page, was size. (16) form
When a Heptapod B sentence grew fairly sizable, its visual impact was remarkable. If I wasn’t trying to decipher it, the writing looked like fanciful praying mantids drawn in a cursive style, all clinging to each other to form an Escheresque lattice, each slightly different in its stance. And the biggest sentences had an effect similar to that of psychedelic posters: sometimes eye-watering, sometimes hypnotic. (16) effect
Much more interesting were the newly discovered morphological and grammatical processes in Heptapod B that were uniquely two-dimensional. Depending on a semagram’s declension, inflections could be indicated by varying a certain stroke’s curvature, or its thickness, or its manner of undulation; or by varying the relative sizes of two radicals, or their relative distance to another radical, or their orientations; or various other means. These were non-segmental graphemes; they couldn’t be isolated from the rest of a semagram. And despite how such traits behaved in human writing, these had nothing to do with calligraphic style; their meanings were defined according to a consistent and unambiguous grammar. (17)
That meant the heptapod had to know how the entire sentence would be laid out before it could write the very first stroke. (23) the premise of writing
The heptapods didn’t write a sentence one semagram at a time; they built it out of strokes irrespective of individual semagrams. (23)
Communication style
One of the heptapods pointed to itself with one limb, the four-terminal digits pressed together. (6). gesture
The heptapod was confirming my utterances as correct, which implied compatibility between heptapod and human patterns of discourse. (6)
It looked like they had analogs of nouns and verbs. (10)
Perhaps their verbs could be written as affixes to a noun. (11)
Raspberry left the room and returned with some kind of giant nut or gourd and a gelatinous ellipsoid. Raspberry pointed at the gourd while Flapper said a word and displayed a logogram. Then Raspberry brought the gourd down between its legs, a crunching sound resulted, and the gourd reemerged minus a bite; there were corn-like kernels beneath the shell. Flapper talked and displayed a large logogram on their screen. (11) Use gesture, sound, and word
For the heptapods, all language was performative. Instead of using language to inform, they used language to actualize. Sure, heptapods already knew what would be said in any conversation; but in order for their knowledge to be true, the conversation would have to take place. (34) Meaning of language
Physical structure
It looked like a barrel suspended at the intersection of seven limbs. It was radially symmetric, and any of its limbs could serve as an arm or a leg. The one in front of me was walking around on four legs, three non-adjacent arms curled up at its sides. Gary called them “heptapods.” (5)
Its limbs had no distinct joints; anatomists guessed they might be supported by vertebral columns. Whatever their underlying structure, the heptapod’s limbs conspired to move it in a disconcertingly fluid manner. Its “torso” rode atop the rippling limbs as smoothly as a hovercra. (5)
I could see the texture of its gray skin, like corduroy ridges arranged in whorls and loops (5)
I heard a brief fluttering sound, and saw a puckered orifice at the top of its body vibrate; it was talking. (6)
It turned out that they had an orifice on the underside of their body, lined with articulated bony ridges: probably used for eating, while the one at the top was for respiration and speech. There were no other conspicuous orifices; perhaps their mouth was their anus too. (10)
For the heptapods, writing and speech may play such different cultural or cognitive roles that using separate languages makes more sense than using different forms of the same one.” (14) meaning
This is my first Communications Lab blog post.