2421: Tower of Babel
| Tower of Babel |
 Title text: Soon, linguists will be wandering around everywhere, saying things like "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" and "more people have been to Russia than I have," and speech will become unintelligible. |
Explanation
The story of the Tower of Babel is the Biblical explanation for the existence of different languages in the world. In the story, humans endeavour to build a tower reaching heaven. Their arrogance angers God and prompts him to sabotage the project. He does this by "confounding their speech" (commonly interpreted as giving everyone their own language), inhibiting their ability to work together.
In this retelling, however, the events are the same, but the motives changed. God is pleased with the tower, and promises to create a diversity of languages, not as a punishment, but as a reward for the member of the party who finds words interesting. Megan seems to recognize the potential issues this would cause, but the word-loving woman is enthusiastic. This plays on Randall's various geeky interests, recognizing that complexities of the world, which frustrate many people, are a source of great joy and interest to others. A world with only one language would make travel and global communication much easier, but for those with an interest in linguistics, it would be deeply limiting, as there would be only one language to study. The party that ascends to the top of the tower consists of Cueball, Megan, and Gretchen McCulloch as the curly-haired woman, who has appeared before in 2250: OK/okay/ok and 2381: The True Name of the Bear.
Phonology is the study of the sounds used in a language or dialect, or of the systems that languages use to organize sounds. For example, English has the words "light" and "right", indicating a distinction between /l/ and /r/, but other languages, such as Japanese, do not, resulting in the (in)famous stereotype. On the other hand, English does not make a distinction between /u/ and /y/, while French does, having words such as "le but" (the goal) and "le bout" (the tip). Word order is the study of order of the parts of a language, e.g., the subject, object, verb, and other modifiers. English uses the subject–verb–object order ("She loves him"), but other languages use subject-object-verb ("She him loves") and other permutations of these orders.
Morphosyntactic alignment is the relationship between the "roles" in a sentence, and how they relate to transitivity. The vast majority of world languages, including English, use nominative-accusative alignment. In nominative-accusative languages, the subjects of transitive verbs (verbs with objects) and the subjects of intransitive verbs (verbs without objects) are treated the same, and differently from the objects of transitive verbs. For example, "She sees him" and "She runs" use the same word "she". However, other forms exist like ergative-absolutive alignment, where the subject of an intransitive verb matches the object of a transitive verb ("She sees him" and "Her runs"), transitive alignment, where the subject and object of a transitive verb are the same and different from the subject of an intransitive verb ("Her sees him" and "She runs"), or split-S and split ergativity, where it follows nominative-accusative or ergative-absolutive based on context. For example, if it depends on animacy, you could have "She (the person) runs", but "Them (the trees) fall".
The title text expands the joke by suggesting that the miscommunication caused by the Tower of Babel is not due to language barriers, but instead because linguists have created intentionally meaningless sentences to illustrate points about grammar and identifies two famous examples of such. "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously", coined by linguist Noam Chomsky in 1957, is an example of a sentence that is structurally correct but contains paradoxes and meaningless comparisons: Something cannot be both colorless AND green (see Invisible Pink Unicorn), ideas do not sleep, and sleeping generally is not done furiously.[citation needed] That said, the sentence "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is so well known in linguistics that a competition to make the sentence meaningful was held in 1985 and attracted a number of entrants. "More people have been to Russia than I have" is an example of comparative illusion. The idea conveyed by the sentence may seem to be clear at first, but upon deeper analysis it has no well-formed meaning and is open to interpretation. Many people interpret its meaning as "I do not own/have in my household as many people as those who have been to Russia."
Transcript
- [The Tower of Babel is shown. It has a broad two sectioned base and above that extends straight up out of the top of the frame, with 10 identical segments. This is seen from afar, so the three people standing at the base of the tower is very small. But Cueball and Megan can be easily identified. They are standing on either side of Gretchen McCulloch. The text spoken is written over the tower in white sections that hides the tower. But the tower can be seen above, between and below these two text segments:]
- Cueball: The Tower of Babel is complete!
- Megan: Let's go meet God!
- [Cueball, Gretchen McCulloch and Megan are now standing at the top of the Tower of Babel. The top is made of bricks, but the part of the last segment before the top looks like those shown in the first panel. God is represented by an off-panel voice coming from a star burst at the top of the panel. The three people look up in that direction.]
- Cueball: Hi God!
- God (off-panel): Wow, nice tower!
- God (off-panel): You did a great job! I'm so proud!
- Megan: Thanks!
- [Same settings but Megan has turned towards Gretchen McCulloch holding an arm out towards her. She has taken one hand to her chin.]
- God (off-panel): I'm going to give you a reward.
- God (off-panel): What do you like about the world?
- Gretchen McCulloch: Hmm. Words are really cool.
- Megan: No, wait-
- [Same settings, in a broader panel. Gretchen McCulloch lifts her hands up curled into fists. Megan has taken her arm down.]
- God (off-panel): Great! I'm going to give you lots of languages to study, each with its own phonology, word ordering, morphosyntactic alignment...
- Gretchen McCulloch: YESSSSSS!
- Megan: We should not have brought a linguist.
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refresh comments!Discussion
So is Gretchen McCulloch xkcd's resident linguist now? Is there going to be character page for her like Cory Doctorow? 172.68.129.136 23:00, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
- I'm hoping so! We could call it "Gretchen McComics." 172.69.34.74 23:24, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
- That's probably not in compliance with whatever stylebook we have here but I love it. Captain Video (talk) 04:24, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
- Could it really be the same Gretchen? The time periods of the two comics are thousands of years apart. And the title text of "True Name of the Bear" says she was devoured. Barmar (talk) 06:31, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
- Maybe it is meant to remind us of her from the other comic, but given the settings and no mention of her name, it cannot be determined that it is her. Great to include mention of the other comic in the explanation, but not in the transcript. Also it cannot be said that there is a real person in this comic (unless of course you think of God as a real person? But even if you consider him a person, then people may debate you on how real he is ;-) Have updated the transcript and categories. And no we should not make a category on her based on two comics, especially not when it is not clear it is her in this one. --Kynde (talk) 09:10, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
- If there's a third comic with a linguist drawn like that, I'd suggest calling the character "Gretchen" as a convenient handle regardless of whether it is or isn't Gretchen McCulloch. --Pi one (talk) 02:32, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
Wait, how could a linguist exist before there were languages to study and compare? Is this the omphalos hypothesis popping up again? GreatWyrmGold (talk) 02:36, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
- They have one language. Presumably, she attempts to thoroughly study that one. This would technically make her a grammarian, but since they don't have contact with any other language, this proto-language wouldn't need make any distinction between grammarians and linguists, so "linguist" would be an appropriate translation. --162.158.79.49 05:55, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
- There's also the possibility that the word "linguist" didn't exist before that moment. "What the hell's a linguist?" "Who is hells?"
- Very astute observation - I take it you are a cunning linguist? 141.101.104.35 20:51, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
Defining "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" {
"colorless green ideas" existing is 0 . List of all existing "colorless green ideas" that don't "dream furiously" contains 0 elements. True.
} 141.101.77.60 06:24, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
Defining "more people have been to Russia than I have" {
if(Have "I" ever been to Russia?){
"More than 1 people have been to Russia.".
} else {
"More than 0 people have been to Russia.".
}
}, so something like {
"At least 1 person that is not me has been to Russia.".
}. 141.101.77.60 06:24, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
- "I possess a number of people as chattel", i.e. servants and/or slaves. (That number could be zero?) "The number of people who have gone to Russia exceeds this value." 141.101.77.168 10:29, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
What colour is invisible ink? --172.69.55.140 10:24, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
Any colour you wish, so long as its alpha is zero! Davidhbrown (talk)
Regarding this line: "A world with only one language would make travel and global communication much easier, but for those with an interest in linguistics, it would be deeply limiting, as there would be only one language to study."
It may be worth noting that this is actually one of the reasons why God is attributed with being upset at Babel and why language was confounded. An explanation I heard is that God was concerned that all humans being part of one language and one culture resulted in absolutism and stifled the variety of human culture that was intended (this relatively recent explanation compared the people building the tower to Soviet Russia), and so the adding of languages wasn't a punishment per se, but an enforced correction to bring society back to how it was "supposed" to be all along. I made an account to note this - I can note it in the explanation if desired. 172.70.131.84 17:01, 6 January 2023 (UTC) Noah
Is Randall mocking the linguists? 2659: Unreliable Connection (talk) 08:32, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
