On Tue, 25 May 2021 12:36:49 +0100, Timothy Collinson
<xxxxxx@port.ac.uk> wrote:

>Reflecting on it, now you've mentioned it, I think it's also exactly what I
>did in _Generation X_ with the gen ship 'crew' using language I'd
>essentially pinched from the wonderful _Dark Eden_ by Chris Beckett.  (If
>you don't know this book and it's sequels, I *highly* recommend giving at
>least the first one a go for a truly alien world and ecosystem.)

Would you be so kind as to list the titles in the series?

>> It's not limited to the prelinguistic, however; arguably, the labelling of
>> 'tweets', SMS messages, or even longer posts on forums or chats with
>> "hashtags" can be considered an example of holophrasis: you have
>> (generally) a single word (which may be a neologism) that, by itself,
>> establishes a semantic context for the rest of the message, and which can
>> in isolation be taken _as_ a message.

>It must be getting quite close to the 'metaphor' language used in Star
>Trek: The Next Generation 5.2 Darmok
>- a personal favourite!

No; "Darmok" was much too dependent on _cultural_ context and history -
there was _no_ way for the crew of the Enterprise to know what the aliens
were saying until they had some sort of common understanding of the
background (and I really disliked that episode because suddenly finding the
information in the ship's computer and pulling it out was too much of a
deus ex machina, on top of what I considered the improbability of language
developing into that form in the first place). Holophrasis starts out
_much_ less abstract than the language in "Darmok". "Darmokese" for
'school' might come out as something like "Socrates and Plato on a log";
holophrasis would probably be closer to my example in the posting, "house
give think" - that is, the contextual loading of holophrasis leans toward
the very concrete, and builds up to the more abstract.

(BTW... how many readers of this understand why I picked the "Darmokese"
phrase I did, _without_ having to look at google or some other reference?)

It didn't occur to me while writing the post about holophrasis, but now
that I think of it, the earliest stages of developing pidgins would likely
be highly holophrastic.

>I also learned that showing him an address and then asking 'near' or 'far'
>was utterly useless in terms of getting an answer that was of any use.
>Near or far in relation to what?!  Poor chap.

This is where the words 'here' and 'there' are useful. "there near here" or
"there far here" with question vocal inflexion would probably have done the
trick (and are holophrastic to boot!).

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