The Ling Space
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: https://youtu.be/QVqDpY-11UM
If you want to learn more about our interviewees, here are their websites:
Jessica Coon: http://jessica.lingspace.org/
Morgan Sonderegger: http://people.linguistics.mcgill.ca/~morgan/
Lisa Travis: http://people.linguistics.mcgill.ca/~lisa.travis/
Captions coming soon! And we’ll see you next time with a regular topic video. .
14:00 I don't think it's grammatical with that many nested clauses.
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.
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's great to hear from multiple experts with different experiences, especially in the envelope of a pop culture theme!
This is so cool! Thank you for this video.
Cheers from Brazil 🙂
So boring. One great video after another. ;>) Keep it up.
tre interesa filmeto! dankon
desire to devour some Chomsky intensifies
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…
Linguistics should be involved in Hollywood movies more often.
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.
11:30 she's definitely a Universalist.
Thanks for putting this together! Fantastic!
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!
Really a great interview. It will help in understanding the film.
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
this as super interesting and informative. Thanks a lot to everyone involved:) would love to see more, if you decide to do it.
Oh god damnit. I thought this was gonna be about directional propositions to, from, for…
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?
anyone know other movies about linguistics please??
jessica is ridiculously attractive
Muchas gracias
Awesome movie and awesome vídeo! Opened my mind to learn french, so… let's do this!
Thanks from Brazil.
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. : )
Great video! And the answer to the last question is DEFINITLY YES! ))
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?
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.
I was just wondering how many of those who listened to 22nd minute of this video didn't know where Madagascar is.
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!
She's adorable
Hey amazing video!! I loved it! Thank u so much for sharing it. And hey this might be a lot to ask but is there any way you can get the symbols Jessica Coon said they gave them? I've been looking for those logograms all over the internet and nothing! Thanks in advance. Great video! 🙂
Oh man I love science
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.
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.
very good content but i hate the youtuber … cringy AF
Yeah they consulted with linguists and conveniently forgot to consult with physicists
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 ?
"Children the of my neighbor will be late."
This actually happens in French-lexifier creole languages. In Louisiana Creole, it'd be, "Piti-yé mô wazin va dèt tar." The plural definite article, in this case, is "yé."
For linguists they do say "uh" and "um" a lot.
Great video but you need to get in shape bro. Skinnyfat is never a good luck
I didn't know that 'funner' was a word- especially one that a linguistic consultant would use….just me? 4:29
Amazing interview and amazing researchers! Very inspiring!
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.
Thanks for making this !