Alien language

Common card · No. 441297

Alien languages are a hypothetical subject since none have been encountered so far. The research in these hypothetical languages is variously called exolinguistics, xenolinguistics or astrolinguistics. A group of prominent linguists and animal communication scientists, including Noam Chomsky, have examined such hypothetical languages in the book Xenolinguistics: Towards a Science of Extraterrestrial Language, edited by astrobiologist Douglas Vakoch and linguist Jeffrey Punske. The question of what form alien languages might take and the possibility for humans to recognize and translate them has been part of the linguistics and language studies courses, e.g., at the Bowling Green State University (2001). Starting with his hypothesis of a genetically predetermined universal grammar of human languages, Noam Chomsky held that it would be impossible for a human to naturally learn an alien language because it would most probably violate the universal grammar inborn in humans. Humans would have...

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