Language
The language of the mri appears to be agglutinative, with each element having a single function. The apostrophes that give mri words their distinctive appearance appear to represent a glottal stop when separating two vowels, for instance, in kel’e’en, "a woman of the kel". However, in other words they seem to merely mark the boundaries between morphemes. There are a few words in which the function of the apostrophe is unclear, and it has been suggested that those are purely decorative, to make the words look more alien.
A careful reader can assemble a fairly large vocabulary of nouns, and even conjecture additional forms. However, there is little in the way of verbs or grammatical structure, so the novels cannot be used as the basis of a working language, as opposed to the elvish languages of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth.
Read more about this topic: Mri (fictional Alien Species)
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
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“Syntax and vocabulary are overwhelming constraints—the rules that run us. Language is using us to talk—we think we’re using the language, but language is doing the thinking, we’re its slavish agents.”
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