One words languages already exist, it'sbasicallywritinglikethis. Take a look at this to educate yourself http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysynthetic_language
The language of a wolves is much more subtle (and I would argue, more efficient) than the sign language of humans. Also, as mentioned by Kaosu, their vocal growling/howling is a variation of one word.Kurokami said:Really, a wolf pack? You wanted to think of a language without words and you thought of a wolf pack? Wouldn't it have been easier to just go with sign language since its a human language?
^^ Thisstukov961 said:Technically, this is precisely what binary is, "1" is high, "0" is low.
High and low as in pitch if you would make a spoken language of it. The word itself could be anything, it's all in the coding.
That's a fair point I guess.KaosuHamoni said:The thing about a wolf pack is that they integrate sounds with body language. Sign language, does not. They use sounds when only absolutely necessary, for example a short, low bark means "Danger", and a howl is a location signal and an expression of territory, while all conversation is taken care of, as he said, via body language and facial expressions. Not only that but all of the sounds are variations on one 'word' if you can call it that.Kurokami said:Really, a wolf pack? You wanted to think of a language without words and you thought of a wolf pack? Wouldn't it have been easier to just go with sign language since its a human language?Paul Hearding said:Well, technically you could have a language without words. Take a look at a wolf pack. They communicate through body language and facial expressions. I'm sure you could develop something like this for humans and then throw in just one word for fun.
Can express very little is not the same as efficiency in my books.Paul Hearding said:The language of a wolves is much more subtle (and I would argue, more efficient) than the sign language of humans. Also, as mentioned by Kaosu, their vocal growling/howling is a variation of one word.Kurokami said:Really, a wolf pack? You wanted to think of a language without words and you thought of a wolf pack? Wouldn't it have been easier to just go with sign language since its a human language?
I was already aware that a lot of Native American languages work this way (as well as Ainu, which isn't Native American, but is in a lot of ways very much like Native American, though no one has any idea why and it may have something to do with Atlantis or something, so...yeah.)megamanenm said:One words languages already exist, it'sbasicallywritinglikethis. Take a look at this to educate yourself http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysynthetic_language
The word 'word' doesn't really fit when talking about polysynthetic languages since there isn't a space in between them, the word morpheme is more fitting here. (Morphemes are the smallest undividable meaningful units of language, dogs has two morpheme, dog and s, antidisestablishmentarianism has 7, ant-dis-establish-ment-ari-an-ism.) So if you're asking if there exists a language where complex meanings can be made with just one morpheme, then the answer is obviously no, that's like taking every sentence that exists and assigning them a number, that's not how languages work.TheBluesader said:I was already aware that a lot of Native American languages work this way (as well as Ainu, which isn't Native American, but is in a lot of ways very much like Native American, though no one has any idea why and it may have something to do with Atlantis or something, so...yeah.)megamanenm said:One words languages already exist, it'sbasicallywritinglikethis. Take a look at this to educate yourself http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysynthetic_language
But that's not what I'm talking about. In that case you still have a whole bunch of different words for things, you just turn them into prefixes and suffixes of a main word.
But I guess that means that we CAN say there are certainly languages that use what are almost one-word sentences. Which is at least kind of related to what I was proposing.
About sign language: as far as I'm concerned, sign language MOST DEFINITELY has words. They are just pronounced silently with hand and arm movements. I'm recalling my college days where we tried to get the school to hire a sign language teacher so some of us could take sign language to fulfill the basic language requirement. The head of the language department (a terrible Spanish teacher) promptly told us that sign language didn't "count" because, and I quote, "it isn't a real language." I'm not sure why the world's deaf didn't attack the town, except for the fact that it was a small college and they probably have more important things to do.
But either way, sign language has a ton of words, so it has nothing to do with what I was talking about anyway.
This is all kind of beside the point. My idea was that you could have a one-word language that would operate entire on tonal pronunciations for meanings. People have said the human ear can only hear like 8 different tones, so I guess that wouldn't work.megamanenm said:The word 'word' doesn't really fit when talking about polysynthetic languages since there isn't a space in between them, the word morpheme is more fitting here. (Morphemes are the smallest undividable meaningful units of language, dogs has two morpheme, dog and s, antidisestablishmentarianism has 7, ant-dis-establish-ment-ari-an-ism.) So if you're asking if there exists a language where complex meanings can be made with just one morpheme, then the answer is obviously no, that's like taking every sentence that exists and assigning them a number, that's not how languages work.