Extraterrestrial linguistics

[Noel Rude]

Greetings,

    Your request brought to mind -- maverick that I am -- the writings of
today's "Design Theorists".  What they're trying to do is define the
fingerprint (one might say) of a mind, be it human, extraterrestrial, or
God.  Though we may dislike the implications of their efforts (i.e.
demolishing Darwin), their work is significant and -- I believe -- worth
noting in such a class as you are about to teach.  Of particular interest
would be William Dembski's recent, "The Design Inference" (or some such
title), published in the Cambridge Mathematical Series.

    Noel


on 11/3/00 12:43 PM, Sheri Wells Jensen at swellsj at BGNET.BGSU.EDU wrote:

> Dear Colleagues,
>
> This summer, I have the wonderful opportunity to teach a graduate seminar
> called "Extraterrestrial Language'.  My plan is to provide a survey of what
> linguistics, literature and the natural sciences have to tell us about the
> possible structure of a truly alien language.  As you may imagine, I'm
> having a wonderful time collecting material from everywhere (science
> fiction, the SETI folks, phonetics...)
>
> I don't want to miss  anything important here.  I'd be grateful for any
> suggestions for readings anyone might care to pass along.  In particular,
> I'm looking for:
>
> 1.  An accessible reading in typology  for nonlinguists (we must know
> what's terrestrial before thinking about what is extraterrestrial...)
>
> 2.  Philosophy of language or cognition readings on what concept that
> underly language might be present across species.
>
> 3. An intro to what we know about complex animal communication systems on
> earth (something about dolphin communication perhaps).
>
> 4.  Musings on whether a non-human language would even be learnable by humans.
>
> 5. Anything else?  Imaginative suggestions appreciated!
>
> Thanks much, and I'll post a summary.
>
> Best,
> Sheri
> --------------------
> Dr. Sheri Wells-Jensen
> 423 East Hall
> Bowling Green State University
> Bowling Green, Ohio 43402
> (419) 372-8935
> swellsj at bgnet.bgsu.edu
>
>