A language transmitted by light?

[Omzinesý]

Note that I'm not introducing any conlang. This is a discussion thread.

I read a sci-fi short story. It had an alien species whose language used light instead of voice to be convayed. Then the heroes learnt to light/speak it with flashlights with colours.

I started to think how the language could function. I ended up that a natural sound system could rather easily be encodedthis way. Vowels would be represented by colours. a e i o u y, for instance.
Stops could be darkness like they are silence in our system. Could their "places of illumination" be somehow encoded by transmissions in the colours around, like our stops in vowels? Would theyr consonant corresponding palatal have the colour of i? Quantity would of course be distinctive, but could they have other consonants than stops?
Stress could simply be a relative strengthening of the light. How about the other prosodic elemnts?

Ideas? How would this kind of system affect the other branches than "fotology"?

[Darkgamma]

Note that I'm not introducing any conlang. This is a discussion thread.

I read a sci-fi short story. It had an alien species whose language used light instead of voice to be convayed. Then the heroes learnt to light/speak it with flashlights with colours.

I started to think how the language could function. I ended up that a natural sound system could rather easily be encoded this way. Vowels would be represented by colours. a e i o u y, for instance.
Stops could be darkness like they are silence in our system. Could their "places of illumination" be somehow encoded by transmissions in the colours around, like our stops in vowels? Would theyr consonant corresponding palatal have the colour of i? Quantity would of course be distinctive, but could they have other consonants than stops?
Stress could simply be a relative strengthening of the light. How about the other prosodic elemnts?

Ideas? How would this kind of system affect the other branches than "fotology"?

Morse code is a basic, "vowel"/"consonant" script for encoding incoming signal. But such a language would have problems for colourblind people.

[Micamo]

It should be considered what method of light production is being used. If it's done by biotic beings, then it's probably done chemically like bioluminescent insects. In that case, the state transitions from different colors couldn't be done very quickly. I can imagine there also being restrictions on what colors can be "reached" from other colors due to chemical reasons: Like, say, purple not being able to immediately shift to green requiring red or blue as an intermediate. Thus a language built on flashes of light might still need "phototactics" which would be very different from how our sounds interact with each other.

I can't think of any reason that this could affect syntax or morphology in significant ways (at least directly: Aliens may well have a totally different parsing algorithm that makes their syntaxes fundamentally different from ours, but this would be true if they used mouths as if they used light) but I can think of logistic differences. It working on sight rather than sound means someone has to be looking directly at you in order to know you're "talking" to them. What sort of visual field do these aliens have? Do they have 360 vision like flies? How would something like an intercom system work with such creatures? Telephones?

[Ear of the Sphinx]

It depends on how many kinds of light-sensors do the aliens have.

Humans got three - red-, green-, and blue-detecting elements. We can see in 3-dimensional color space. We see a difference between 550 THz (green) and mixed 450 + 650 THz (pink) light. We don't see difference between 510 THz (yellow) and mixed 450 + 550 THz though; that's how display works.

[Ollock]

As an aside: Sign language linguistics uses the same phonological terms as spoken linguistics: phoneme, phone, phonotactics, etc, because the structure of places, movements, and handshapes are analogous to consonants, vowels, and suprasegmentals, respectively. If this "light language" patterns in any way similarly to human phonology, the same terms should be used.

[eldin raigmore]

You'll need a protagonist named Roy G. Biv.

[Omzinesý]

You'll need a protagonist named Roy G. Biv.

What??

[Micamo]

You'll need a protagonist named Roy G. Biv.

What??

Red
orange
yellow

Green

Blue
indigo
violet

[Ànradh]

You'll need a protagonist named Roy G. Biv.

Oooft... XD

[Darkgamma]

You'll need a protagonist named Roy G. Biv.

What??

Red
orange
yellow

Green

Blue
indigo
violet

You mean:

Red
Orange
Yellow

Green

Blue
Indigo
Violet

[Ollock]

You'll need a protagonist named Roy G. Biv.

What??

Red
orange
yellow

Green

Blue
indigo
violet

You know, now that I think of it, I'm sure that indigo is only included in the list to make the mnemonic work. Indigo is most certainly not a basic color word, and orange barely qualifies itself.

[Mind]

I had somthing like this a long time ago. I had had an alien race that use their glowing eyes to comunicate.one eye could be a different color than the other.
So you can have stuff like this...
Red red
Red blue
Blue red
I thought about making a language out of it but I thought it would be useless.

[Visinoid]

Sorry to destroy your dreams, guys... But a language using light is actually a sign language, since you need light to see. :)

What a downer I am.

(Post intended to be a joke. 8D)

[Qaar]

Sorry to destroy your dreams, guys... But a language using light is actually a sign language, since you need light to see. :)

What a downer I am.

(Post intended to be a joke. 8D)

It's actually of less use to people, since in addition to blind people not being able to use it, colourblind people wouldn't be able to use it, either.

[Mind]

Were we not talking about aliens?
ALIENS DO NOT GO BLIND

[Ànradh]

Were we not talking about aliens?
ALIENS DO NOT GO BLIND

Why not?
If they can detect coloured light they must have photo-receptors of some kind, multiple types in fact.
If some were replicated poorly or damaged or whatever, they could become 'blind'.

[teh_Foxx0rz]

Were we not talking about aliens?
ALIENS DO NOT GO BLIND

Why not?
If they can detect coloured light they must have photo-receptors of some kind, multiple types in fact.
If some were replicated poorly or damaged or whatever, they could become 'blind'.

I don't think he was being serious.

[Ànradh]

Were we not talking about aliens?
ALIENS DO NOT GO BLIND

Why not?
If they can detect coloured light they must have photo-receptors of some kind, multiple types in fact.
If some were replicated poorly or damaged or whatever, they could become 'blind'.

I don't think he was being serious.

Oh...

Sorry to destroy your dreams, guys... But a language using light is actually a sign language, since you need light to see. :)

What a downer I am.

(Post intended to be a joke. 8D)

It's actually of less use to people, since in addition to blind people not being able to use it, colourblind people wouldn't be able to use it, either.

In any case; deaf and dumb people would have similar problems for spoken language and cephalopods already communicate with photophores.

[Ollock]

OK, fine, I'll mention it: I once had an idea for a sign language that used color as a suprasegmental. It never got anywhere because 1) I know very little about signed languages, 2) I don't know how to phonetically transcribe signs, and 3) this being an alien species, I would have to build an articulated model in order to get all the phones worked out.

[eldin raigmore]

You know, now that I think of it, I'm sure that indigo is only included in the list to make the mnemonic work. Indigo is most certainly not a basic color word, and orange barely qualifies itself.

Depends on the language.

At the current moment I think in English they both might as well be; the average English-speaking user of those terms is not aware they're derived from the names for West Indian Lilac or for the globose berry of an evergreen.
Perhaps that's less true of "indigo"; maybe most L1-English-speaking people who use that colorterm know it comes from a replacement for woad.
At any rate there was a time when both words were clearly derived and therefore not "basic" for English in the terminology of Berlin & Kay's famous paper.

But if you look in Das grammatische Raritätenkabinett you can see

Result No. 1
Number 2
Phenomenon a basic colour term for TURQUOISE
Where found Tsakhur (Nakh-Daghestanian)
Domain lexicon
Subdomain basic terms
Keywords colour terms
Type nonesuch
Universals violated
Source Davies, Ian R. L., Tat'jana Sosenskaja, & Greville G. Corbett (1999). Colours in Tsakhur: First account of the basic colour terms of a Nakh-Daghestanian language. Linguistic Typology 3: 179-207.
Comments By Frans Plank 21.09.2006, 10:21

Or do suchlike finds belong with MORPHOLOGICAL rara/rarissima/nonesuches,
since basicness crucially includes being morphologically simple or at any rate non-compositional?



Result No. 2
Number 3
Phenomenon (a) two basic colour terms for BLUE and LIGHT BLUE
(b) and at the same time none for PURPLE

Where found (a) Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian (East Slavonic, IE); Guatemalan Spanish, Italian (Romance, IE); Nepali (Indo-Aryan, IE); Turkish (Altaic)
(b) Russian from 17/18th up to early 19th century
Domain lexicon
Subdomain basic terms
Keywords colour terms
Type nonesuch
Universals violated
Source Corbett, Greville G. & Gerry Morgan (1988). Colour terms in Russian: Reflections of typological constraints in a single language. Journal of Linguistics 24: 31-64.
Hippisley, Andrew (2001). Basic BLUE in East Slavonic. Linguistics 39: 151-179.
Comments By Frans Plank 21.09.2006, 10:21

Or do suchlike finds belong with MORPHOLOGICAL rara/rarissima/nonesuches,
since basicness crucially includes being morphologically simple or at any rate non-compositional?



Result No. 3
Number 4
Phenomenon two basic colour terms for RED1 and RED2
Where found Hungarian (Ugric, Uralic)
Domain lexicon
Subdomain basic terms
Keywords colour terms
Type nonesuch
Universals violated
Source Wierzbicka?
Comments —


Result No. 4
Number 5
Phenomenon a sizable inventory of basic smell terms, i.e., one with more than two or three items

Where found Des(s)ana (Tucanoan, Andean-Equatorial); Totonaca (Totonacan, Penutian); Wanzi, Nzebi, Sangu, Tsogo, Fang (all North Western area, Bantu Proper, Niger-Congo); Ser(r)er Ndut (West Atlantic, Niger-Congo); Kapsiki (aka Higi; Biu-Mandara, Chadic, Afroasiatic)
Domain lexicon
Subdomain basic terms
Keywords smell terms
Type rarum
Universals violated (claims by Weisgerber, Sperber, et al., refs. in source)
Source Plank, Sigrid & Frans Plank (1995). Unsägliche Gerüche: Versuche, trotzdem vom Riechen zu sprechen. In Bernd Busch & Uta Brandes (eds.), Das Riechen: Von Nasen, Düften und Gestank, 59-72. Göttingen: Steidl.
Plank, Frans (1997). Apologie für die niedere Sinnlichkeit. Unpublished, Universität Konstanz.
with further references
Comments By Frans Plank 21.09.2006, 10:21

Or do suchlike finds belong with MORPHOLOGICAL rara/rarissima/nonesuches,
since basicness crucially includes being morphologically simple or at any rate non-compositional?




Result No. 5
Number 129
Phenomenon eight basic colour terms, of which no less than four are for REDs:
shocking pink, burgundy, reddish brown, and wine red
Where found Jaqaru (Andean)
Domain lexicon
Subdomain basic terms
Keywords colour
Type nonesuch
Universals violated Berlin & Kay?
Source Hardman, Martha (1981). Jaqaru colour terms. IJAL 47: 66-68.
Comments —


Result No. 6
Number 130
Phenomenon a basic colour term for undifferentiated YELLOW-GREEN-BLUE,
as a "catch-everything-else" category in addition to BLACK, WHITE, and RED
Where found Arrernte (PN, Australian); Karajá (Macro-Ge); Lele (Chadic, Afroasiatic); Dazaga (Nilo-Saharan) (?); Chico (Maidu, Penutian) (?); Chinese (Sinitic) (?); Japanese (?)
Domain lexicon
Subdomain basic terms
Keywords colour
Type rarum
Universals violated Berlin & Kay differentiation sequence
Source Kay, Paul & Louisa Maffi (1999). Color appearance and the emergence and evolution of basic color lexicons. American Anthropologist 101: 743-760.
Levinson, Stephen C. (2000). Yélî Dnye and the theory of basic color terms. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 10: 1-53.
Bailey, Ashlee C. (2001). On the non-existence of blue-yellow and red-green color terms. Studies in Language 25: 185-215.
Comments By Frans Plank 21.09.2006, 10:21

The Emergence Hypothesis, considered as supplementary to the Berlin-Kay Differentiation Sequence which prohibits such basic terms, licenses such a basic colour term for speech communities where colour does not play a salient role in distinguishing objects.

For Lele, a catch-all YELLOW-GREEN-BLUE is doubtful: in addition to '(intensely) black, dark/light blue', 'white', and 'red', Frajzyngier's recent grammar (2001: 88, 105-106) mentions two colour terms (which in this language are verbs), bole 'range of colors covering all shades of green, blue, and also light yellow' and wìlé 'range of colors covering red, dark rusty color, pink, light brown, and clay color'.

Frajzyngier, Zygmunt (2001). A Grammar of Lele. Stanford: CSLI Publications.