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Comment parler à un alien ?
Imaginez : les extraterrestres sont là ! Sur Terre. À côté de chez vous… Et d’emblée se pose la question cruciale qui accompagne l’extraordinaire événement : comment leur parler ? Comment s’en faire comprendre ?
Le langage, sans conteste au cœur de ce qui nous définit en tant qu’espèce pensante, sera d’une importance cruciale. La science-fiction, domaine réflexif par essence, l’a compris depuis ses origines et en a fait l’un de ses sujets de prédilection, tant au cinéma qu’en littérature, de Babel 17 à Premier Contact, de L’Enchâssement aux Langages de Pao.
Frédéric Landragin, docteur en informatique-linguistique, directeur de recherche au CNRS, fait ici dialoguer — précisément — science-fiction et linguistique, livrant un ouvrage aussi érudit qu’accessible qui expose les bases des sciences du langage, questionne la nature des langues et s’interroge sur les modalités d’un premier contact. Car après tout, comme nous l’apprend souvent la science-fiction, l’alien n’est pas toujours celui que l’on croit, et apprendre à parler à l’autre, c’est aussi savoir se parler à soi-même…
Le langage, sans conteste au cœur de ce qui nous définit en tant qu’espèce pensante, sera d’une importance cruciale. La science-fiction, domaine réflexif par essence, l’a compris depuis ses origines et en a fait l’un de ses sujets de prédilection, tant au cinéma qu’en littérature, de Babel 17 à Premier Contact, de L’Enchâssement aux Langages de Pao.
Frédéric Landragin, docteur en informatique-linguistique, directeur de recherche au CNRS, fait ici dialoguer — précisément — science-fiction et linguistique, livrant un ouvrage aussi érudit qu’accessible qui expose les bases des sciences du langage, questionne la nature des langues et s’interroge sur les modalités d’un premier contact. Car après tout, comme nous l’apprend souvent la science-fiction, l’alien n’est pas toujours celui que l’on croit, et apprendre à parler à l’autre, c’est aussi savoir se parler à soi-même…
272 pages, Paperback
First published October 18, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 28, 2018
Me revoici avec un petit ovni. je ne sais pourquoi, je m'imaginais un autre contenu que celui que j'ai découvert. je m'attendais à des exemples d'écriture, de structure de textes, des tableaux mais non, rien de ceci ne se trouve dans ce livre.
Au départ, on nous explique la structure de nos langues et leurs variantes suivants les pays, on a aussi droit à des explications sur les phonèmes et compagnie, la différence entre langage et langue et comment des auteurs de SF et de fantasy comme J.R.R.Tolkien et aussi des linguistes ont travaillés sur le comment et le pourquoi de la formations des langues, la constructions de langues fictives, les recherches et les méthodes propres à chacun avec bon nombres d'exemples. Cette partie-là est bien plus intéressante qu'un cours de français sur la conjugaison...
Donc, j'ai poursuivi ma lecture à petite vitesse car, il y a tellement d'informations à intégrer que cet ouvrage a beau être petit, c'est une mine documentaire très étayée et complète. On nous dit bien que sans sources écrites, un contacte avec des "extraterrestres" sera la chose la plus difficile à faire car il faudra trouver des indices de langage pour apprendre à communiquer avec eux, ce sera un travail de longue haleine qui peu au final ne mener à rien.
L'auteur aborde aussi des théories qui ont encore du succès à notre époque comme celle de Chomsky ou Sapir-Whorf.
Pour finir, cet ouvrage est un énorme exposé sur la linguistique utilisé dans le domaine de la science-fiction avec ses tenants et ses aboutissants, riche en informations et en exemples. Et je me dis qu'il y a encore beaucoup de travail en amont si un jour on espère communiquer au-delà de notre petite planète. Bref, ce livre a été une bonne surprise, avec un contenu très intéressant.
Au départ, on nous explique la structure de nos langues et leurs variantes suivants les pays, on a aussi droit à des explications sur les phonèmes et compagnie, la différence entre langage et langue et comment des auteurs de SF et de fantasy comme J.R.R.Tolkien et aussi des linguistes ont travaillés sur le comment et le pourquoi de la formations des langues, la constructions de langues fictives, les recherches et les méthodes propres à chacun avec bon nombres d'exemples. Cette partie-là est bien plus intéressante qu'un cours de français sur la conjugaison...
Donc, j'ai poursuivi ma lecture à petite vitesse car, il y a tellement d'informations à intégrer que cet ouvrage a beau être petit, c'est une mine documentaire très étayée et complète. On nous dit bien que sans sources écrites, un contacte avec des "extraterrestres" sera la chose la plus difficile à faire car il faudra trouver des indices de langage pour apprendre à communiquer avec eux, ce sera un travail de longue haleine qui peu au final ne mener à rien.
L'auteur aborde aussi des théories qui ont encore du succès à notre époque comme celle de Chomsky ou Sapir-Whorf.
Pour finir, cet ouvrage est un énorme exposé sur la linguistique utilisé dans le domaine de la science-fiction avec ses tenants et ses aboutissants, riche en informations et en exemples. Et je me dis qu'il y a encore beaucoup de travail en amont si un jour on espère communiquer au-delà de notre petite planète. Bref, ce livre a été une bonne surprise, avec un contenu très intéressant.
January 5, 2025
Linguistics or languages is one of the various ingredients of science fiction. After WW2, various novels where language was a key element saw the light of day. Today as well, SF-authors try to implement linguistics into their stories, as a theme (main or side). See, for example, this list on Goodreads. Not to mention the non-fiction works, essays, studies and alike that exist on science fiction and language.
One of these, at least in French, is 'Comment parler à un alien ?' by Frédéric Landragin, doctor in computational linguistics and director at CNRS (transl.: French National Centre for Scientific Research). The premise of the book is of language and particularly how certain authors treated the subject in their respective novels or short stories (from a century ago 'til more contemporary times), where the characters aren't all human, but belong to other species. Hence the title: How to talk to an alien?
A paper that I considered to be quite similar, also because it took the same theoretical basis and the same novels as examples, is this one.
'Comment parler à un alien ?' is divided into five parts, preceded by a foreword and an introduction, in which the author presents the topic of linguistics a bit and how the book is set up.
01) From Science Fiction to Linguistics Fiction
SF contains many subgenres, so logically, a word is needed to explain linguistics fiction. Two theories stand out in this chapter: Noam Chomsky's Universal Grammar and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Both are explained and compared for compatibility or contradiction. Of course, a non-fiction document on science fiction can't do without practical examples (regarding these theories/hypotheses) in which languages play a key role, in this case novels:
* The Enchantment, by Ian Watson
* The Languages of Pao, by Jack Vance
* Babel-17, by Samuel Delany (my review)
* 1984, by George Orwell (my review)
* We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin (my review)
...
02) Origin and Evolution of Natural Languages
This part deals with oral and written languages and the difference between pronunciation and writing. The origins and evolution of language(s), and the various circumstances in which they are put to use are also explained. The various alien species presented in the plethora of SF-novels also have their own language, adapted to their particular societies, just like people in Britain, France, ... don't speak the same kind of French everywhere, as it differs per region. Here too, a handful of novels or short stories were used to clarify and demonstrate all this:
* Shall We Have a Little Talk?, by Robert Sheckley
* A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
* His Master's Voice, by Stanilaw Lem
* ...
Finally, can we anticipate the evolution of languages? Can we "see" or predict how French, English, etc. will be spoken or written in many decades from now? It seems several authors had added such an anticipation in their stories. Some of them are Lyon Sprague de Camp ('The Wheels of If'), Anthony Burgess ('A Clockwork Orange'), Anthony Boucher ('Barrier'), or even Cixin Liu ('The Dark Forest', 2nd volume in the series 'Remembrance of Earth's Past').
03) Artificial Languages, but for What Purpose?
Artificial or invented languages have existed for a very long time. Examples are Klingon in Star Trek, the languages Tolkien invented, and more. Sirs Paolo Albani and Berlinghiero Buonarroti have counted no less than 1,100 imaginary languages, presented them in their 'Dictionnaire des langues imaginaires (Les Belles Lettres, 2001), translated from Italian ('Aga magéra difùra. Dizionario delle lingue immaginarie'). I don't know if it has ever been available in English.
When languages are invented in fiction, their primary use is not for the population or as a means of communication, but to create a realistic exoticism and to reinforce the spatial or temporal shift that is inseparable from science fiction. One example mentioned is Iotic in Ursula K. Le Guin's 'The Dispossessed', where this language serves as common language between two peoples, as one doesn't understand the other's language
In this chapter, our professor first gives a rundown of invented languages in the real world before switching to those invented in the realm of fiction, and of course which SF-works have used these "real" or "fictional" languages. I've put some links to Wikipedia -as a general source, as it also contains references and other sources - for clarity.
Real world:
* Volapük (Wikipedia), Esperanto (Wikipedia), and the complementary international languages
* Loglan (Wikipedia), Lojban (Wikipedia), Lincos (Wikipedia), and the languages based on logic
Fiction:
* Sindarin (Wikipedia), Klingon (Wikipedia), and the natural languages of fiction
* Laadan (Wikipedia), Mechanese (cnrs.fr), and Speedtalk (Wikipedia)
* Glossolalia (Wikipedia) and xenoglossy (Wikipedia)
* Invented words and sense of wonder (Wikipedia)
* Novums (Wikipedia) and sense of reading
04) The Fundamental Elements of a Language
Languages consist of various building blocks. For each of those, Mr Landragin offers a short explanation and takes one or more novels or stories to illustrate how that linguistic element is used in those respective stories.
* Lexicon (Wikipedia)
* Phonetics (Wikipedia)
* Prosody (Wikipedia)
* Morphology (Wikipedia)
* Syntax (Wikipedia)
* Semantics (Wikipedia)
* Pragmatics (Wikipedia)
* Stylistics (Wikipedia)
05) First Contact with Extraterrestrials
Of course there has been no contact yet with real extraterrestrials. The subject here is contact with ancient languages, for which decoding needed to happen, like the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Rosetta Stone, and alike. The people having used those means to communicate are the "aliens" or "extraterrestrials" (even though they lived on Earth) in terms of language and linguistics. But there's also attention for contact with proper extraterrestrials- should they exist - on other planets. Especially a planet like Mars, but several others as well, has served many times for exploration and even inspiration for various SF-authors to write stories in that context and invent languages as an important element in the narrative.
Let's Anticipate!
Contact with aliens: keep it simple but use all means att your disposal. Human rules and theories may work when encountering new tribes in the Amazonian region, but do those theories also help with aliens? We don't know. The main theories - Sapir-Whorf, Chomsky's Universal Grammar or perhaps Universal Language - are the only ones we have and on which many SF-works (novels, films, ...) are based. But who knows what future authors will come up with that will provide new insights in linguistics, language and thus language-fiction? Until then, there are plenty of works to explore and enjoy, as authors like Jack Vance, Ted Chiang, China Miéville, Greg Egan and others have demonstrated.
----------
Non-fiction about fiction, always interesting, especially if it concerns a subject to one's liking. Le Bélial has published a handful so far in their collection Parallaxe. When it comes to linguistic fiction, the world of SF has a large collection of such novels (as the focus lies on novels here). This book is thus a very welcome and informative companion.
However, if you're new to linguistics, yet have read quite some SF, I would - from my experience, of course - suggest other sources (books, websites, ...) on language(s) and its characteristics before reading this one here. Books from e.g. Jean Aitchinson (The Seeds of Speech, which I read in Dutch), David Crystal, Guy Deutscher (The Unfolding of Language), Steven Pinker (The Language Instinct, The Stuff of Thought), David Bellos (Is That a Fish in Your Ear?), Ferdinand de Saussure (Cours de linguistique générale), Henriette Walter (Le français dans tous les sens), Maria Candea and Laélia Véron (Le français est à nous !), ... are a better entry and step-up for works like 'Comment parler à un alien ?'.
To close off, Reactor Mag - formerly known as tor.com - often publishes lists of books with theme xyz. They have one focusing on books where languages play a key role. See here.
One of these, at least in French, is 'Comment parler à un alien ?' by Frédéric Landragin, doctor in computational linguistics and director at CNRS (transl.: French National Centre for Scientific Research). The premise of the book is of language and particularly how certain authors treated the subject in their respective novels or short stories (from a century ago 'til more contemporary times), where the characters aren't all human, but belong to other species. Hence the title: How to talk to an alien?
A paper that I considered to be quite similar, also because it took the same theoretical basis and the same novels as examples, is this one.
'Comment parler à un alien ?' is divided into five parts, preceded by a foreword and an introduction, in which the author presents the topic of linguistics a bit and how the book is set up.
01) From Science Fiction to Linguistics Fiction
SF contains many subgenres, so logically, a word is needed to explain linguistics fiction. Two theories stand out in this chapter: Noam Chomsky's Universal Grammar and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Both are explained and compared for compatibility or contradiction. Of course, a non-fiction document on science fiction can't do without practical examples (regarding these theories/hypotheses) in which languages play a key role, in this case novels:
* The Enchantment, by Ian Watson
* The Languages of Pao, by Jack Vance
* Babel-17, by Samuel Delany (my review)
* 1984, by George Orwell (my review)
* We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin (my review)
...
02) Origin and Evolution of Natural Languages
This part deals with oral and written languages and the difference between pronunciation and writing. The origins and evolution of language(s), and the various circumstances in which they are put to use are also explained. The various alien species presented in the plethora of SF-novels also have their own language, adapted to their particular societies, just like people in Britain, France, ... don't speak the same kind of French everywhere, as it differs per region. Here too, a handful of novels or short stories were used to clarify and demonstrate all this:
* Shall We Have a Little Talk?, by Robert Sheckley
* A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
* His Master's Voice, by Stanilaw Lem
* ...
Finally, can we anticipate the evolution of languages? Can we "see" or predict how French, English, etc. will be spoken or written in many decades from now? It seems several authors had added such an anticipation in their stories. Some of them are Lyon Sprague de Camp ('The Wheels of If'), Anthony Burgess ('A Clockwork Orange'), Anthony Boucher ('Barrier'), or even Cixin Liu ('The Dark Forest', 2nd volume in the series 'Remembrance of Earth's Past').
03) Artificial Languages, but for What Purpose?
Artificial or invented languages have existed for a very long time. Examples are Klingon in Star Trek, the languages Tolkien invented, and more. Sirs Paolo Albani and Berlinghiero Buonarroti have counted no less than 1,100 imaginary languages, presented them in their 'Dictionnaire des langues imaginaires (Les Belles Lettres, 2001), translated from Italian ('Aga magéra difùra. Dizionario delle lingue immaginarie'). I don't know if it has ever been available in English.
When languages are invented in fiction, their primary use is not for the population or as a means of communication, but to create a realistic exoticism and to reinforce the spatial or temporal shift that is inseparable from science fiction. One example mentioned is Iotic in Ursula K. Le Guin's 'The Dispossessed', where this language serves as common language between two peoples, as one doesn't understand the other's language
In this chapter, our professor first gives a rundown of invented languages in the real world before switching to those invented in the realm of fiction, and of course which SF-works have used these "real" or "fictional" languages. I've put some links to Wikipedia -as a general source, as it also contains references and other sources - for clarity.
Real world:
* Volapük (Wikipedia), Esperanto (Wikipedia), and the complementary international languages
* Loglan (Wikipedia), Lojban (Wikipedia), Lincos (Wikipedia), and the languages based on logic
Fiction:
* Sindarin (Wikipedia), Klingon (Wikipedia), and the natural languages of fiction
* Laadan (Wikipedia), Mechanese (cnrs.fr), and Speedtalk (Wikipedia)
* Glossolalia (Wikipedia) and xenoglossy (Wikipedia)
* Invented words and sense of wonder (Wikipedia)
* Novums (Wikipedia) and sense of reading
04) The Fundamental Elements of a Language
Languages consist of various building blocks. For each of those, Mr Landragin offers a short explanation and takes one or more novels or stories to illustrate how that linguistic element is used in those respective stories.
* Lexicon (Wikipedia)
* Phonetics (Wikipedia)
* Prosody (Wikipedia)
* Morphology (Wikipedia)
* Syntax (Wikipedia)
* Semantics (Wikipedia)
* Pragmatics (Wikipedia)
* Stylistics (Wikipedia)
05) First Contact with Extraterrestrials
Of course there has been no contact yet with real extraterrestrials. The subject here is contact with ancient languages, for which decoding needed to happen, like the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Rosetta Stone, and alike. The people having used those means to communicate are the "aliens" or "extraterrestrials" (even though they lived on Earth) in terms of language and linguistics. But there's also attention for contact with proper extraterrestrials- should they exist - on other planets. Especially a planet like Mars, but several others as well, has served many times for exploration and even inspiration for various SF-authors to write stories in that context and invent languages as an important element in the narrative.
Let's Anticipate!
Contact with aliens: keep it simple but use all means att your disposal. Human rules and theories may work when encountering new tribes in the Amazonian region, but do those theories also help with aliens? We don't know. The main theories - Sapir-Whorf, Chomsky's Universal Grammar or perhaps Universal Language - are the only ones we have and on which many SF-works (novels, films, ...) are based. But who knows what future authors will come up with that will provide new insights in linguistics, language and thus language-fiction? Until then, there are plenty of works to explore and enjoy, as authors like Jack Vance, Ted Chiang, China Miéville, Greg Egan and others have demonstrated.
----------
Non-fiction about fiction, always interesting, especially if it concerns a subject to one's liking. Le Bélial has published a handful so far in their collection Parallaxe. When it comes to linguistic fiction, the world of SF has a large collection of such novels (as the focus lies on novels here). This book is thus a very welcome and informative companion.
However, if you're new to linguistics, yet have read quite some SF, I would - from my experience, of course - suggest other sources (books, websites, ...) on language(s) and its characteristics before reading this one here. Books from e.g. Jean Aitchinson (The Seeds of Speech, which I read in Dutch), David Crystal, Guy Deutscher (The Unfolding of Language), Steven Pinker (The Language Instinct, The Stuff of Thought), David Bellos (Is That a Fish in Your Ear?), Ferdinand de Saussure (Cours de linguistique générale), Henriette Walter (Le français dans tous les sens), Maria Candea and Laélia Véron (Le français est à nous !), ... are a better entry and step-up for works like 'Comment parler à un alien ?'.
To close off, Reactor Mag - formerly known as tor.com - often publishes lists of books with theme xyz. They have one focusing on books where languages play a key role. See here.
March 20, 2019
Un livre TRES dense qui demanderait une relecture, tellement il y a d'informations sur le domaine de la linguistique. Mais c'est une très belle introduction à la linguistique, et ça donne également très envie d'écrire et de lire de la SF !
Je pense que le seul gros défaut c'est que le livre devient de plus en plus dur à suivre tellement les connaissances à assimiler et à convoquer sont délicates ; mais à côté de ça on nous présente les thèses les plus communes de la linguistique, leur application dans la SF, ainsi que tous les matériaux linguistiques servant à analyser des phrases.
Je pense que le seul gros défaut c'est que le livre devient de plus en plus dur à suivre tellement les connaissances à assimiler et à convoquer sont délicates ; mais à côté de ça on nous présente les thèses les plus communes de la linguistique, leur application dans la SF, ainsi que tous les matériaux linguistiques servant à analyser des phrases.
May 8, 2020
Lecture légère qui ne réussi pas à atteindre son but: le chapitre final arrive à la conclusion que on n'en sait rien. Le livre est bien documenté, mais l'auteur se perd facilement dans de considérations superficielles. D'ailleurs il prends des choix théoriques douteux, mais intéressants. Je ne voyait pas l'heure de finir la lecture.
December 2, 2018
Excellent, bien documenté, facile à lire et bourré de références... Génial... Très content de l’avoir lu celui-là !
May 3, 2020
Un livre assez intéressant rempli de références bibliographiques et d'extraits de livres de SF. Très axé sur la linguistique, ce qui le rend parfois un peu difficile mais toutefois très complet.
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