Languages

and other linguistic matter

Language in FaerieMUD attempts to be entirely connotative and never denotative in nature. And every attempt at connotative behavior in FaerieMUD can be modeled as linguistic matter. In other words, language is always assumed be an attempt one FaerieMUD character or creature to influence the behavior of another, and every behavior designed to influence the behavior of another is assumed to be language.

Thus, the way a horse positions its feet is considered language if it is intending to cause another horse (or a cow or whatever herd animal might be present) to choose a different orientation of its own position. Such communication is assumed to be in a language called equine? which is part of the Ruminate Family of languages, just as Ogham is part of the Elfin Family and Kobold? is a member of the Sauroid Family.

As a South American biologist put it in the early '70s:

<blockquote>[I]f it is recognized that language is connotative and not denotative and that its function is to orient the orientee within his cognitive domain, and not to point to independent entities, it becomes apparent that learned orienting interactions embody a function of non-lingistic origin that, under a selective pressure for recursive application, can originate through evolution the system of cooperative consensual interactions between organisms that is natural language. Particular orienting interactions, like any other learned conduct, arise from the substitution of one type of interaction for another as a cause for a given behavior, and their origin as a function of the general learning capacity of the nervous system is completely independent of the complexities of the system of cooperative interactions to which their recursive application gives rise. — Humberto Maturana, Biology of Cognition

Languages in FaerieMUD are a form of matter which can be expressed in a periodic table. Stories are the objects produced with this form of lingui-matter. A story abstracts the form of connotative behavior, while language abstracts the matter (that which remains the same through changes in form).

See also Elfin Family and Matter.

— Scotus - 24 Jul 2001