Universal 'Babelfish' Could Translate Alien Tongues
New Scientist (04/18/08) Reilly, Michael
A linguist and anthropologist in the United States believes it is possible to build a universal translator that would enable humans to communicate with intelligent aliens, if contact was ever made. University of California, Berkeley's Terrence Deacon believes language develops from the need to describe the physical world, which would restrict the construction of a language. Even if an alien race used scents to communicate, the language would still have an underlying universal code that could be deciphered, as in mathematics. Words serve as symbols, and no matter how abstract they are, their reference to a physical object limits their relationship to other symbol words, which would define the grammatical structure that emerges from putting words together. As a result, researchers one day might be able to develop devices that use sophisticated software to translate alien language on the spot. Florida Atlantic University's Denise Herzing believes the theory can be tested by studying dolphins.
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