Fictional Linguistics in _Reading the Bones_

Reading the Bones by Sheila Finch was originally a short story published in 1998. I first came across it in the Guild of Xenolinguists anthology, published in 2007--and only recently discovered that that particular story had in fact been expanded into a novel, published in 2003! (As usual, these are affiliate links, so I will get a cut if you go to Amazon and buy the books through them.)

The novel is in 2 parts; part 1 reiterates the same plot as the original short story, in somewhat more detail. Part 2 is entirely new material exploring some of the consequences of part 1 decades later, and providing some more background information about the alien Frehti.

The plot in each case centers around the ritual significance of the Frehti language. And, unsurprisingly, we get a few examples of romanized Frehti words, whose usage conforms to the framework laid out in previous posts. Narrative Translation is used for a few things, although in the opposite of the usual direction (that is, translating English dialogue into Frehti), to highlight the translation convention (i.e., that although the aliens' speech is presented as English in the text, intrafictionally they're really speaking something else):

"You have found. I am called First-Among-Mothers."

The word she used was Na-freh'm-ya, and he heard a common root in it, but she didn't give him time to think about it.

I do not know how well Sheila Finch actually developed the Frehti language behind the scenes, but it's worth noting that there is indeed a common root in there whose meaning matches up with the English translation, which is later made accessible to the attentive reader. So, kudos for that! 

We also get examples of Making it Irrelevant followed up by Making it Obvious for the words "vragim" (human) and "kipiq" (a physically disabled male Freh who plays a ritual role in female society).

The specific textual usages of Frehti language are not as significant to this story, however, as are the ideas behind the language. While I would be sad to see them go, the story would work just fine with no concrete examples of the Frehti language at all.

The story is ultimately based on the deep ties between language and culture, and the significance of writing as a medium for preserving culture. The titular bones are in fact literal bones on which the defining exemplars of the symbols of Frehti writing are inscribed, with the inscription on bone, and the ritual sacrifice required to obtain the writing material, serving to give authoritative weight to those specific symbols as bearers of the language. This is a neat cultural note, and could serve as a science fictional conceit all on its own; unlike humans, the Frehti did not naturally evolve their written language from simpler recording systems, but rather consciously and intentionally designed it as part of a religious ritual spanning generations. There are, however, additional examples of fictional linguistic science which make this a solid work of linguistic science fiction.

In part one, the viewpoint character Ries Danyo observes

Mixed systems were not unprecedented; Earth had seen several, most notably the Egyptian and Mayan scripts. He wasn't particularly surprised to see one evolving here. But eventually all the languages of Earth had found it more convenient to adopt alphabets.

I cannot imagine that Sheila Finch was entirely unaware of, e.g., Chinese logograms, so can I only assume this represents a bold prediction for the future in which the story takes place!

In part two, we have this bit of exposition:

Older than Indo-European, older than Sanskrit, the ancestor of all human languages had been painstakingly reconstructed over decades in the twenty-first century,

This, of course, has not been done yet! And in fact, the general consensus among linguists is that it cannot be done; there is simply not enough information left to reconstruct Proto-World, since spoken language doesn't fossilize, putting this speculation firmly on science-fictional grounds. The idea that it could be done, however, is a critical prologue to the intrafictional theory that further comparative reconstruction between alien languages could reveal a common origin for all languages in the galaxy. This could be a cool idea to explore--not exactly plausible in the real world, but subject to suspension of disbelief in the service of good stories, much like Larry Niven's fictional conceit that humans are not native to Earth in his Known Space universe. Unfortunately, without too much much risk of spoilers, I think I can say that the resolution of this particular story could fairly easily have occurred without it. A common feature of all of the Guild of Xenolinguists stories is the idea that specialized psychoactive drugs can be used to make field linguists better able to quickly acquire new alien languages--although some amount of actual fieldwork is still required. At the end of part 2, exposure to this Proto-Galactic language theory is supposedly what allows the returning linguist to Solve a Problem, but honestly, in the circumstances, I think sole reliance on the already-established magic language learning drugs would've sufficed.

I would like to see a sequel that dives into this idea more deeply, thus better justifying its introduction, but so far as I know Reading the Bones is currently a strictly standalone work. But on the off chance that Sheila Finch happens to read this blog post, FYI, you've got at least one customer if you do decide to follow up with another novel!

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