How aliens might speak

A TRANSATLANTIC linguistics expert who has been called on to work out how aliens from distant galaxies might speak now touches down in Yorkshire to deliver the latest in a prestigious lecture series at the University of Huddersfield.

And the visit of Professor Jessica Coon, who gives the fifth annual Babel Lecture on Friday 24 May (7.30pm), will bolster a growing fascination among students and scholars for invented languages, inspired by such cultural touchstones as Game of Thrones and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Professor Coon is based at McGill University in Canada, and as a leading researcher of indigenous languages across the world – and the grammatical principles they have in common – she was enlisted by the producers of the 2016 blockbuster movie Arrival, revolving around a linguist who works with the military to communicate with alien lifeforms after mysterious spacecraft appear around the world.

For its November 2017 edition, the linguistics magazine Babel, published by the University of Huddersfield, conducted an interview with Professor Coon about her work on Arrival and her research into languages around the world.  She then accepted an invitation to deliver the 2019 edition of the lecture series organised by the magazine and which has drawn large audiences to hear from a wide range of experts in the field of language.

Professor Coon will talk about her film project and the intellectual exercise of imagining how we might communicate with aliens.  She will also talk about her own research, discussing fieldwork in linguistics and the concept of Universal Grammar.

Co-editor of Babel is the University of Huddersfield’s Professor Dan McIntyre, who is delighted that Jessica Coon is flying in for the latest lecture. 

“In recent months, we have had quite a few articles in Babel on science-fiction languages and invented languages and the 2019 lecture follows on perfectly from that theme,” he said.

Game of Thrones – where some characters speak in an invented tongue named Dothraki – is one reason for the upsurge of interest, said Professor McIntyre, who believes that there is considerable value in making up new languages.

“One of the things it does is teach you how languages work in terms of structure, so it’s a useful thing to do,” he said, adding that Lord of the Rings creator J.R.R. Tolkien – now the subject of a new biopic – was himself a linguist and devoted a great deal of time to working on invented languages.

• Tickets for the Babel Lecture are free and can be obtained online.