The Linguistics of Arrival
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- Опубліковано 6 чер 2024
- The film Arrival came out last week, with a linguist as its hero! The movie deals with xenolinguistics and how we could learn to communicate with aliens. The studio asked linguists from McGill University to consult on the movie, and we recently got a chance to talk with professors Jessica Coon, Morgan Sonderegger, and Lisa Travis about their experiences! We discussed:
- their involvement in the movie
- their thoughts on analyzing alien speech and writing
- the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and linguistic determinism
- linguistic fieldwork
- language variation and finding it in sci-fi
And much more! There are some spoilers for the movie, but nothing major.
If you want to know more about what alien languages look like, check our previous video: • What Could Alien Langu...
If you want to learn more about our interviewees, here are their websites:
Jessica Coon: jessica.lingspace.org/
Morgan Sonderegger: people.linguistics.mcgill.ca/~...
Lisa Travis: people.linguistics.mcgill.ca/~...
Captions coming soon! And we'll see you next time with a regular topic video.
10 years ago, I had a massive stroke due to a car accident. My blood clot broke my left side of my brain. My tongue muscle groups was damage (apraxia). My grammatric sentence structure was destroyed for oral speech and written speech. I couldn't placed the nouns, verbs, adjectives and prepositions (in, to, from, for, at) in my thoughts. I was speechless (expressive aphasia). Luckily, I improved bit by bit shaping the little words until sentences pour out of my written words and oral speech (I still sound like a foreigner speaking English). This took eight years of grueling works. My physical exercises and rest and trying out some words patterns to speak them to my friends and strangers.
Wish you showed us one of those weird circle paragraphs and had a linguist talk to us about how they would try to read it.
It's great to hear from multiple experts with different experiences, especially in the envelope of a pop culture theme!
Yeah, we really enjoyed making it, as well. Glad you liked it! Thanks. ^_^
Really cool! I might have to go see this movie now! I'm still waiting for a blockbuster about music theorists saving the world by analyzing a symphony though...
If you are a music theorist yourself than don't. It's easy do get hyped about a movie about your profession, but having seen a few movies about my profession I can say that very often they are quite difficult to watch.
Yeah, probably true. But I can still dream...
Close Encounters of the Third Kind depicts using music to communicate with aliens
12tone it could be done. You could say they'd assign a sort of letter to notes. You can also say that people sort of sing when they talk to distinguish the emotion your putting out
I was going to say 'close encounters of the third kind' :)
This is so cool! Thank you for this video.
Cheers from Brazil :)
Thanks for watching! Glad you liked it. ^_^
Thanks for putting this together! Fantastic!
this as super interesting and informative. Thanks a lot to everyone involved:) would love to see more, if you decide to do it.
Lol. I legitimately clicked on this video to learn about the linguistics of the word 'arrival'. I'm currently learning Russian and they have so many different words meaning 'to arrive'; it's actually a pretty interesting verb. : )
Loved it! I watched the movie and I instantly got caught up by it. This is a great material! Thank you for sharing it with us. Greetings from Venezuela!
Loved the movie, despite some minor flaws and had no idea these people were involved. That's brilliant! Thank you for the video. keep up the great work
Loved this interview! It was very interesting both from a linguistics and a cinematography point of view. I'm crazy about going to watch this movie, but it's only coming out in a few weeks where I live.
Awesome! Glad you liked the interview. And I think you'll like the movie, as well, when you can see it - it's really very good. ^_^
Amazing interview and amazing researchers! Very inspiring!
Glad you liked it! ^_^
Thanks for making this !
Awesome movie and awesome vídeo! Opened my mind to learn french, so... let's do this!
Thanks from Brazil.
Great video! And the answer to the last question is DEFINITLY YES! ))
21:25 An American friend of mine tried to learn some Swedish (my native language) a couple of years back. After practicing with apps and such for a while, she wrote me a sentence. I understood exactly what she meant, but not a single word had the correct grammar or where in the right place within the sentence. Language is funny like that.
Wonderful interviews
*Producer 1:* Linguistics are going to be very important in our movie about aliens. We should hire some experts.
*Producer 2:* How many do you think we'll need?
*Producer 1:* A lot is riding on this project. Better make it at least three.
*The US government in the movie:* Linguistics are going to be very important when we contact _actual_ aliens...
We should hire one expert.
Everyone: Smart stuff
Me: She's really cute
Me but with the dude haha
@@leafninja247 me with both
@@lazy_bloomyesss
I think this was a pleasant fiction. We have enough trouble trying to communicate with, for example, ants or fish, who by definition are much more closely related to us than aliens would be. Even on earth many species don't communicate verbally, with ants for example it's mostly pheromones. There's not only no reason to think aliens would communicate verbally, there's no reason to think they would even have anything a human might recognise as a sense organ. There's no reason to think they would have what we think of as sight, sound, and smell. They might not use any of those to communicate. Even the best linguists have no idea what ant pheromones are meant to express or how to interpret them. Just imagine trying to figure out how, or even whether, aliens communicate with each other. In Arrival, the heptapods are really only different from humans and other terrestrial organisms in superficial ways. The filmmakers did their best to make them look, act, and communicate in an "alien" way, but really there's no reason to think aliens would be so similar to terrestrial species. Their anatomy might not be similar to anything on earth, in which case communication would probably be completely beyond the pale. I think if we ever do find alien life, it will be so different from anything on earth, so "alien", it will make us question our very definition of what life is, what an organism is, what a creature is. Linguistics and communication won't even enter into the picture
This tends to be one of my pet peeves in alien movies. The aliens are always ridiculously human, for reasons exactly like this. Although it is understandable why they'd make them like this, as we have no reference whatsoever of what an alien would truly be. So I suppose they resort to making them the "least human" as possible. On the very bottom of the scale of human-ness, to make them seem "alien"...but still very human from what a real alien would be.
Liked your comment. I don't really disagree with any of the points you make - all valid points. Indeed, we haven't even learned to communicate with dolphins and whales yet, who clearly have many similarities with humans and the larger brains needed for intricate and developed languages. And of course we tend to anthropomorphize - assume that aliens will behave like we would in the future when we have the technology to do so i.e. be space explorers seeking to make first contact with other worlds.
However I would offer a few thoughts. Not as a rebuttal of what you assert, but more as a corollary. First: the well-known notion that science fiction is really about exploring what it means to be human. The film is as much about epistemology and the nature of human to human communication as it is about aliens. The aliens are just the catalyst for these fields to be explored in a new way. Second: This is storytelling: if the aliens were so much more actually alien and unknowable, there would be no point of engagement for the audience. The material must fall within the zone of proximal development: difficult enough to stimulate and challenge the audience, but not so difficult as to be impenetrable. This film is meant for the non-expert lay audience, after all. And third: as far as we know, ants, fish, and most other animals on Earth simply don't have the complex language and corresponding intelligence we have. If they did, they would dominate the Earth the way we do. Animals who have tools use them, us included. If animals have complex languages that are not yet known to us, we needn't concern ourselves or blame ourselves for that lack of current understanding. But the hypothetical aliens don't fall into the category of Earth animals. Through our human languages, we have the ability to store and describe information about the past, present, future, real and hypothetical situations. The analogy of what the heptapods give Louise Banks i.e. the ability to perceive time non-linearly i.e. seems inconceivable and a violation of understanding of the laws of physics - but our human ability to conceive of and communicate both real and hypothetical events in all directions of time (past, present, future) is equally inconceivable to other Earth species. So, by way of that analogy, we might entertain the idea that things which seem impossible to us would be possible or a much more highly advanced alien species.
What are the "blue books"? Are they the Routledge Applied Linguistics series? I think there is an opening there for a monograph on the linguistics of scifi languages like Klingon and the Heptaopods. What I think "Arrival" missed is an inverse Sapir-Worf mechanism: in order to understand the Heptapod language Dr Louise Banks had to *first* acquire an ability to think in terms of the future and past as intertwined nonlinearly.
I'm learning French right now, the most difficult part is translating a sentence like this: I did not give some of it to him. You would say "Je ne lui en ai pas donné" or I (did) him some not give. Maddening!
It was such a good movie too.
Yeah, it really was. ^_^
Muchas gracias
Thanks for the video!
Throughout the movie I kept wondering why they would teach the aliens their names right after teaching them 'human'. Why did they feel like that's important and that they'd identify by the concept of names? Do you know anything about that?
to differentiate between a collective you and singular you? maybe... so that the aliens can answer the purpose of their whole species on earth instead of a "joe" alien
So that the Heptapods can understand that "human" is the collective noun, not the personal noun for Louise. Also so that they can confirm the same in reverse: that the logogram displayed represents the collective noun of their species, rather than the personal noun of "alien joe".
Louise explains this idea to the general at one point, when she discusses the components of the question "What is your purpose on earth?" and how to explain each of those components.
*desire to devour some Chomsky intensifies*
i wonder what he thinks of the movie
He would hate the theoretical basis of the plot. Chomsky was the biggest opponent of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and the movie puts forth the strongest form of the hypothesis (a.k.a linguistic determinism).
agree
Oh god damnit. I thought this was gonna be about directional propositions to, from, for...
My Fair Lady: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harris
great questions and great answers and this was very cool . this was a 'crack' team of linguistics experts they used . would that be a good description ?
Although I haven't seen the movie (though I plan to soon), I, as a self-taught linguist, find all of this fascinating. The idea that a film can finally capture the ideas of what I call 'Linguistic Racism' is groundbreaking in terms of cinematography. Along with the current problems that we have (racism; sexism; and homo-, trans-, and xenophobia, to name a few), I think that we need to begin to step in and start understanding and even embracing the differencs we humans have even in our most basic but most important tool: language.
11:30 she's definitely a Universalist.
anyone know other movies about linguistics please??
No, but I saw a play in Philly called "The Linguist" that I've literally been waiting everyday since then to recommend to someone. But my social circle doesn't really appreciate this field. But today, my friend, is that day.
Godly question... what can be what but it cant exist until it can be defined. there can be a certain time perception language that can further help me or this new awareness that will continue to go on will be explored. any help would be great.
tre interesa filmeto! dankon
Just curious, what js the point of using esperanto here?
may you please answer me. I'm highly confused...
I want to major in Japanese studies, however it'll be alot to pay just for learning a new language. But I actually want to learn multiple languages, I do not know any majors that allow this. I came across a major called "linguistics", I've done all research and am still ultimately confused what it is and what careers you can get while having a linguistics degree. what exactly is linguistics? do you major in multiple languages or just one? and what are some career ideas for having a degree in this major?
linguistics is not learning languages at all; it's learning the science behind the language. I always put it this way: A doctor studies diseases; but this doesn't mean he HAS a lot of them.
Interesting question from my perspective. My Japanese wife and I are both educators. She has a second bachelors degree in linguistics from a university in the US (her first degree is from her university in Japan) - i.e. the language of instruction for her linguistics degree was English - and I followed her studies very closely, reading her textbooks along with her, discussing linguistics concepts with her, helping her conduct research, etc. So, I feel not entirely unqualified to answer your question: what is the linguistics major and what do you do with it?
First: there are many kinds of linguistics degrees, obviously including advanced degrees which have pre-requisites. In terms of your entry-level undergraduate degree in General Linguistics, it's easy to tell you what it is not. It is not a direct pathway to language learning, although it certainly concerns itself with that. You do not "major" in one or more languages as a linguistics major. Think of linguistics as the science of language. The philosophy of language too. A linguistics major studies the elements common to all languages from the smallest elements - phonemes, phonology - to larger elements - syntax, semantics. And looks at these phenomena as they exist among many languages found around the world. Languages are compared with each other, categorized according to structural similarities and differences, and the trends that emerge can be useful to help us understand human history and the history of societies and cultures.
Which brings me to the next point: a bachelors degree in Linguistics is a stepping stone degree to a number of similar but disparate higher degree paths. Picture a Venn diagram with Linguistics, Anthropology, Sociology, degrees in languages and literature (English or otherwise) - all overlapping. A linguistics degree is a good undergraduate pathway to a bunch of different fields, all interesting in my opinion. By itself, though, an undergraduate degree in linguistics doesn't directly lead to any notable career paths.
I answered partly for mental exercise during my morning coffee, a philosophical defense of the general linguistics degree, if you will. But out of curiosity - your comment is 4 years old and you would have graduated by now - did you in fact end up studying linguistics and if so, how was your experience?
She's adorable
Oh man I love science
11:49 or just the sound
I can be looking at her talking for hours.
I have designed 3D language, thank you for your inspiration.
I loved the movie, but since we can't even decipher whale language I'm doubtful we could even get a handle on a language from off planet. And in *days*? Uh uh.
You forget that the aliens need us to be able to decipher their language. So they are cooperating with us, in a sense, to accelerate the process of our learning it.
But no, it probably would not take days.
That is one little problem with the novel and the movie, the focus on the hard way to learn from each other.
For some narrative reasons, the Heptopots are want to teach us their language and their way of "thinking", its very important and makes totally sense in the story.
But the communication in a case of a real first contact would most likely based on the universal language itself - Mathematics.
Good old Carl Sagan´s "Contact" paints on this point a very accurate picture.
The process of some fine tuning could be take days too but both sides are knowing the language very well, especially if one part is capable to interstellar travel.^^
@JGW 54: there’s nothing in the original short story or film adaptation which suggests a time span of only “days”. Actual time passed is not directly addressed in either, so I assumed we were watching snippets of work carried out over months. I should point out though, it was easier for me to make this assumption after reading the story first, based on the heptopods’ reason for making contact (which wasn’t addressed in the film): they realize they will need our help several thousand years in the future due to an unnamed threat to their race or planet’s well being. They give (teach) humans the gift of seeing time all at once so that we’ll be ready & willing to help them when the time comes. One must assume the heptopods will stay as long as necessary to ensure we learn their language in order to ensure our ability to help them later.
@@AgentDynamicthe only proof that mathematics is the language of the universe comes from mathematics,we have no idea what kind of laws are known or expressed by another species coming from who knows where ,if they even see mathematics as a stand-alone subject like us humans do
I think the most direct contact you can have with an alien is that ,contact ,the same way you would do with a god . In that case all of the qualities of human knowledge should be used ,from philosophy to math to art .
I was just wondering how many of those who listened to 22nd minute of this video didn't know where Madagascar is.
Mister. On sunday, I have a theoretical linguistics test. The test is mid term one. It will be hard because the who teaches me is a man who studied directly under chomsky.Thus, his exams are tricky and hard. Can you give me any advice?
It depends what the topics are, but just putting your head down and studying is always a good way to go! We have videos on a lot of topics, if you need a different sort of explanation, too. Good luck! ^_^
🇨🇦
jessica is ridiculously attractive
I hate to encourage sexualizing women, but... as a former linguistics student, I think I'm in love. I could listen to her talk about clitic climbing all day.
I can not disagree on that!
@@TorgoFraNorgo I'd climb her clitic in a heartbeat
I didn't know that 'funner' was a word- especially one that a linguistic consultant would use....just me? 4:29
Just you. Anyone with better than average linguistic skills knows how to both use words ironically and sarcastically, or subtly, ignoring the technicalities to make a point.
wu, ibc, lesson 2
If you feel efficient when speaking German, it is *definitely* not because of our grammar 490
This movie was excellent in everything but linguistics. 12:30 mark and a bit of critical thinking should clarify that this movie's reality resembles real linguistics almost in the same way Indiana Jones' movies resemble actual archeology.
The more one studies the creation ,production, and techniques of film making the more it's realized that all film really can be categorized as fantasy. The fantasy of a very complex magic trick attempted to fool viewers into thinking they are watching something real or plausible.
Every person I've spoken with that is an expert in a field which has been portrayed in film or TV shows will tell of the many ways they are depicted falsely. Every time. Most viewers are not aware of what's actually required for this or that process.
So boring. One great video after another. ;>) Keep it up.
Thanks so much! That's the right kind of boring, I think. ^_^
For linguists they do say "uh" and "um" a lot.
True. Some of them used "like" several times, but seldom. Those are filler words. High linguistic competency does not directly correspond to high linguistic performance. When a speaker is answering a question, or explaining a situation they have not answered many times before (or at all) , we tend to require more wait time while we consider what we want to say and how to say it. Even though these experts are explaining concepts in their own field of expertise, they are explaining them within the context of their role in a very famous film (high stakes) dealing with a fictional alien language (unique scenario), and they are being filmed - certainly a novel situation.
The other phenomenon to mention is accommodation: how we change (accommodate) the way we're speaking depending on who we are speaking to. I noticed that the frequency of filler words increased later in the interviews with each respective expert (if at all), indicating an increased familiarity with the interviewer and a more relaxed mental state. We speak more formally with strangers and more informally with friends, on both conscious and subconscious levels.
Indeed they are highly educated experts, but they are humans first. And if linguistics has taught me one thing, it has taught me humility. We are all products of the linguistic environments we were born and grew up in, with all the habits and trappings implied therein. Filler words are a fascinating aspect of language as they offer an outwardly observable insight into the brain thinking, preparing and constructing speech in real time.
Vrai, je suis français ´Québec ´ j,ai appris l,anglais ,Mohak, que ton cerveau se refait des circuits pour voir les idées de différentes maniéré et plus philosophe moins sressé pour t,exprimer vrai
Young lady could easily pass as an Elon Musk relation, even to mannerism.
Yeah they consulted with linguists and conveniently forgot to consult with physicists
That would interrupt their daydreaming
yeah, what for? Interstellar travel not possible...bummer 😞
this was as dull as the movie.
not as dull as some comments you may find
Great video but you need to get in shape bro. Skinnyfat is never a good luck
how uncomfortable the pace is to listen omg it's giving me rushed tight ass feeling
i cant enjoy