Timeline for answer to How many unique sounds would a verbally-communicating species need to develop a language? by Cem Kalyoncu
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
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| Apr 6, 2023 at 16:30 | comment | added | Cem Kalyoncu | @AlexShroyer I don't disagree it is impossible but it is much more probable that the creatures will evolve just a few more sounds. Decoding this much information will require intelligence that will have to evolve just to deal with sound. | |
| Apr 5, 2023 at 20:58 | comment | added | Alex Shroyer | If someone can guess the sender of a Morse code message from hearing it, I don't see why emotion or sarcasm would be impossible for the medium. Extremely difficult to detect, perhaps, but not impossible. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystroke_dynamics | |
| Apr 5, 2023 at 19:31 | comment | added | Mark Morgan Lloyd | Two points there. First, something that we are good at is comparing time intervals and signal coincidence hence deriving what electronic engineers would call a clock from a signal stream: without that music wouldn't work. Second, I believe that beginners are far better at sending well-paced Morse code than they are at understanding a message sent at the same speed by somebody else. So I'd suggest that the fundamental requirement is that there's sufficient information in the message stream to be able to quantise the encoding: a Morse code message comprising a single dot or dash is meaningless. | |
| Apr 5, 2023 at 15:12 | comment | added | Cem Kalyoncu | @Matthieu, Perkins You might be right but still it is quite difficult when there is almost no slack. A single flip means the entire word is wrong. They will not have letter breaks like we do because they did not evolve written language first then mors code. They also do not have distinct sounds, thus words will be all they have. It is possible to design this creature but evolving like this has a very low chance. It will be easier to support more complicated vocal cords than larger brains. Evolution often takes the easier path. | |
| Apr 5, 2023 at 15:11 | comment | added | Cem Kalyoncu | Good points. @JBH I didn't say it is impossible, but unlikely. | |
| Apr 5, 2023 at 0:33 | comment | added | Perkins | This is exactly why Morse code is self-referential with regard to timing. A dash is the length of three dots. Letter separation is one dot-time of silence. Word separation is one dash-time of silence. The consistency of those timings is important for understanding it. The actual speed is limited only by what the practitioners can keep up with. Morse also uses special encodings for line signals ("prosigns"). AR, AS, CP,CQ, SOS, etc. When sending these signals the usual letter break is elided and the whole sequence is sent at once. This makes it distinctive to avoid confusion. | |
| Apr 4, 2023 at 14:57 | comment | added | Matthieu M. | A person talking slowly or quickly is NOT in itself a problem. What you are looking for is calibration. So long as the culture as a handful of appropriate greetings, then when you meet someone and greet them, they can pick up the speed at which you modulate your sounds from the greeting. Also, from a story perspective, unusually slow/quick speakers, or speakers who vary the pace as they speak, are just the equivalent of people with funny/non-understandable accents in our own world. It's normal not to perfectly understand a foreigner at first. | |
| Apr 4, 2023 at 14:41 | comment | added | JBH | Your first paragraph is from the perspective of someone who uses a more complex vocalization who is unwilling to believe that a society could develop around just two sounds and work out a perfectly viable language. Please don't fall into the trap of believing that since humanity developed this way, there must be no other way. | |
| Apr 4, 2023 at 8:04 | history | answered | Cem Kalyoncu | CC BY-SA 4.0 |