Extraterrestrial linguistics

[Clayton]

> 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'd like to suggest taking some readings from "Linguistic Semantics" by
William Frawley.  While probably not as fun as some other readings might be,
it has good coverage of the progressive distinctions that people make with
language.  If you could narrow this down into brief readings I think it
would provide a good foundation for discussing the pragmatics of language.

   - Clayton Gillespie
     e-lectra