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IamLEAM1983
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To Nereus

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

I've just watched a fairly scathing documentary that tears down ape cognition research as done by Penny Patterson, among others. It got me thinking - how do Void Weavers process surface-world languages, if your brain structure is so different from ours?
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IamLEAM1983
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Post by IamLEAM1983 »

"Currently, most linguists tend to give Noam Chomsky credit in pointing out that there's a nebulous something about human condition that predisposes humans, anthros and, in some sense, everyone else we've seen so far towards forming sign-object connections without simply waiting for input-correction or praise. That's in opposition to Skinner's model, which posited that children only really learn a language through positive reinforcement. Being from a species that's tailor-made to process massive quantities of data, I can confirm that if this were the case, pluricentennials like myself or Tanner or Vlastos would only have a lexicon of, oh, a few hundred words to work off of. As for mortals? You'd simply never get past gibberish.

Concerning apes, what torpedoed Patterson's research was the growing awareness that Koko the gorilla wasn't intuiting deeper or more complex meanings out of her own lexicon, and didn't do much more than improvise new names for new things using what she already had. Washoe, another chimp from a few decades earlier, improvised "water bird" in ASL to refer to a swan seen in a park, but otherwise mostly stuck to simple structures expressing basic needs. Imagine if asking for a slice of pie meant you'd be forced to say something like Give me give hand give pie give piece give food mouth give Nereus give pie me instead of Can I please have a slice of pie? That would mean I wouldn't have the ability to construct a sentence or express anything beyond what constitutes my grasp of the present moment!

For my people, this is a problem we face in reverse. You see, most of us remember being born, Chauncey being the exception that confirms the rule. We're effectively sapient and aware from the moment of our attaining full gestation, but our consciousness isn't pulled into the realm of our confined and young bodies. We exist, instead, as an awareness that's anchored to both parents, and instinctively grasp all that'll be ours to alter using the Black Speech. Our first building blocks for sentences, in a sense, are atoms themselves, and we 'learn' by tampering with and playing with the physical reality that surrounds us. We also access the Darkhallow without the adults' need for an interpretive layer, and soon receive the first massive data dump our collective gestalt will offer us.

Before long, that massive packet is being installed, in a sense, in our minds - and language blooms. It's about at that point that we find ourselves pulled into our own bodies in a permanent fashion; and it's so strenuous that the body only allows it to happen as quickly as it does because we've instinctively developed the urge to prepare ourselves for it. Cuttles ingest an astronomical amount of food in their first hours, and then enter a hibernating state where they reach physical and cerebral maturity. Meris certainly remembers how that blasted midwife offered her our son as a token gesture, only allowing her to embrace it for a few moments. He was already visibly growing, right beside her, and had to be led to his Birth-Feast quickly.

He was, of course, but not before being ripped out of his own body."

Nereus coughs as he pushes past the unpleasantness of his son's birth and the circumstances of the following days and years.

"Language as you understand it is something that requires a great deal of voluntary simplification for us Void Weavers. We can ponder all that we feel, all we sample and all that we desire in words that can shape the world itself around us, but effective communication demands optimization, and our society places little value in Socratic teaching methods. Things will change for those of us freed of Dalarath's influence, but I wouldn't be surprised if it unearthed a number of underlying problems we simply glossed over. I remember how baffling the conditional tense was for me, the previous Augur's son, when I could simply make whatever it was I wanted!

One of the concubines would look at me and say I should think about taking a bath, and I'd just look back at her in complete puzzlement, seeing as I could simply will away whatever filth she saw on me! Why should I think about taking a bath, I'd reply back, I'm the Augur's son!"

He chuckles.

I've, uh, had very good teachers since then, let's say."
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