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From: mary whalen <marewhalen@yahoo.com> Subject: (urth)Linguistics in science fiction Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 11:28:24 This is Sean Whalen (prion). ---John Bishop <jbishop@blkbrd.zko.dec.com> wrote: > re _Snow_Crash_: it was fun, but the basic premise is just wrong; > Sumerian is _not_ the first language--it's maybe the oldest one we > have texts from, but that's different. Plus it's not a "brain-stem > hacking" tool; I've looked at it in passing and it's just another > language. As a BA in Linguistics, I've not yet seen SF which gets > Linguistics right at all; the tendancy is to go wild on the wildest > version of Whorf' hypothesis, or to get some basic concept wrong. > As an MSc in Computer Science, it's the same for computing. This > is not to say that there couldn't be a tool for programming the mind > via language (indeed, advertising and so on show that there _is_), > but it's not going to be Sumerian. This post is interesting, because I recently saw a book by Jack Vance called _The Languages of Pao_, which said something like "The first science fiction book based on the science of linguistics" on the cover. I have no idea what the story is about. Since Wolfe says he was influenced by Vance, particularly the Dying Earth books, I wondered if there are any stories where someone has noticed any emphasis on linguistics. prion _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com *More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/