Chapter 3: Metaphorical thinking
Author's note: If you don't like language and linguistics, this chapter might be a little too dry for you… I like it when our super qualified Starfleet personnel get to do some smart research talk.
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"Ey'all did come only a little high," the earnest human says. Spock stares at him blankly for a second before turning pointedly to Uhura who is nodding thoughtfully, an excited glint in her eyes.
"But the time lower than the highest time, ey'all came… sorry, ey'all all did come two bounces as high?" She says in what is clearly standard, but indecipherable just the same.
"Sweet!"
"Sweet!" she echoes. "Sugar, where ey'all did be?"
"Stonewards. Y'all do follow." Their informer turns and heads off with purposeful strides, his long colorful braids almost sweeping the dusty floor of the basin.
They follow, Uhura taking the lead. Spock considers taking out his tricorder, but there is little he can do with it at the moment – the human settlement is, seemingly willingly, stuck with 22nd century technology, and the smugglers they are hunting are no longer present. Spock's assessment is that they regularly use this moon to resupply, and that they have a hidden lair somewhere in these mountains. If the Starfleet officers can find it, it might give them some clues to the smugglers' true base of operations.
It is, strategically, an excellent choice. The settlers aren't hostile to strangers, but severely uninterested in contact, which works to the smugglers advantage.
As a result of the limited contact, the uniformization of phonemes, dialect variation leveling and drastic slowing of language change that has occurred to most versions of Standard has not occurred here. The local dialect is… strange.
"It's not really strange, Sir," Uhura says. She somehow manages to input data on her pad while keeping up with their long-legged guide on the narrow mountain path, an impressive feat for a human. "Their sound system hasn't changed a lot since they settled here a century and a half ago, actually. The less contact a language community has with other languages, the slower language change proceeds: phonetical and grammatical language variation in an area correlates with the speed of language change."
Spock ponders this. "But here we have a lack of contact, and yet a high speed of language change."
"Ah, but only a high speed of a particular kind of language change, Commander. They clearly have a high turnover in the vocabulary, but a low change when it comes to phonemes. That makes sense: there are more word replacements when new situations are encountered – and here they've had to adjust to a whole new climate!"
Spock nods, keeping a wary eye on the lieutenant's foot falls, in case he needs to steady her on the rocky path.
"Is the universal translator up yet, Lieutenant?" He asks, hoping.
She shakes her head. "No, and I'm not prioritizing fixing it at the moment, not with the grammar and phoneme inventory so similar to Standard. It's more or less only a matter of metaphors."
"Indeed. But how are you interpreting the metaphors?"
"Human languages are inherently metaphorical, Sir. Very little is straight information, most is couched in various culturally grounded metaphors."
"I have stored and analyzed all of the metaphors utilized by my mother during my childhood, Lieutenant. Unfortunately, I have no recollection of most of the metaphors that the settlers prefer to use. But you have clearly encountered them before?"
Uhura shakes her head, a happy grin on her face "Nope! Never heard them before. Or, never heard them higher, as they would say… It's all systematic, Mr. Spock, a system of cognitive metaphors."
"A most cumbersome communicative system."
"That's something I hear from Vulcan linguists a lot. Oh, you have metaphorical thinking in modern Vulcan as well, though not as much. Nothing like human languages. There's an interesting paper by K'Inna about that, actually. I will send it to you when we get back… The thing is, if you don't understand the local base metaphors, you're in a lot of trouble. But as soon as you… well, as soon as a human understands a base metaphor, they can build on that and decipher an infinite amount of similar metaphors without having to commit them to memory."
Spock nods, thoughtfully. "Human metaphors are not so much a matter of lexicon, as a matter of a cognitive operation, then."
"Yes! Take time, for instance. In Standard, we have a base metaphor that is 'the future is forward, and the past is backwards'. That's why we say I'm looking forward to the next shore leave or I have left that part of my life behind me. And that's why, if I come up with a brand new metaphorical way of expressing something, another human will just, well, compute it and hopefully get it."
She thinks for a moment. "What about this: That photo album didn't just take me back, it was like a bungee jump rope."
She gives him an expectant glance over her shoulder and he concentrates. He does know the sport equipment in question quite well, since he insisted on accompanying the captain when he tried it out on New Luna Beta.
"The photo album in question made the speaker remember," he ventures, he has that meaning stored for take me back. "And since the speaker… presumably enjoys bungee jumping, it was a pleasant recollection," he finishes uncertainly, but is met with a brief shake of dark curls.
"I'm afraid not, Sir. Now, a human might be puzzled by what I just said at first, because they've probably never heard it before. But in a second or so their minds will have started searching for the metaphor in the same way that you instinctually would start to solve a math problem before you. I'm not sure you could stop your mind from solving a math problem, and I'm sure no one could stop me from instinctually try to interpret metaphors. So, it would go something like this: the bungee jump rope pulls you back up, they key here being back, and does so very forcefully and suddenly. And back is connected to the past, I know that from the base metaphor. So the best guess a human would make about the meaning, would be something like The photo album made be remember the past very suddenly and vividly."
They've come up the old goat trail to a thin rope bridge and their guide motions for them to wait while he checks it out. Uhura exchanges a few nearly indecipherable comments with him, and then sinks down on her haunches, eyes on her pad, one hand fiddling with the recording settings of the tricorder. Spock remains standing. There is no reason to think the smugglers are left, but his hearing is better than the others', and it is always good to keep an eye on the surroundings. He sorts through the information the lieutenant has given him in his head.
"The natives use a different base metaphor for time."
"Yes, Sir."
"While time in standard is often described as being on a horizontal axis in relation to a humanoid body, the present being forward of that body and the past behind the body, their time metaphor rests on a vertical axis. The future is downwards, the past is upwards. Knowing this you can then understand various descriptions of time events, even if you have never heard them before."
"Mm… and it's mostly instinctual." She looks up, eyes sparkling in a way that calls to him. This is not his field, but he recognizes intellectual fascination when he sees it. "And do you know the best part?"
"I suspect you are about to inform me."
"The best part is when metaphors are mixed! Humans don't only instinctually compute a single metaphor, we can blend them together. Do you remember President Correra's State of the Federation speech that was broadcast in the rec room last week? At one point she said as we look back at those who have gone before us, we must honor their memory and preserve their legacy for our descendants. That's three separate base metaphors for time! All thrown together! Back is earlier in time; before us, that is in front of us, is earlier in time; and downwards is later in time, you get that in the descend, going down, part in descendants…"
"I found the speech confusing," Spock admits. "I had intended to ask you about it. But you are saying that the other humans had no trouble parsing the mixed metaphors?"
"If they did, it was such a minor cognitive blip that they forgot a minute later. Well, except for me, I remembered. love metaphors. There's such…" she searches for a word, "Beauty. There's such beauty in them." She turns a warm smile at him – Spock notes that warmth indicates friendship and affection, as cold indicates hostility, but the entire temperature scale is not applicable in the metaphorical use. The lieutenant is warm in her behavior, but not hot.
For Spock, most metaphors he hears on the Enterprise can simply be looked up, courtesy of his eidetic memory. He realizes that he has indeed learnt to perform the cognitive operations that the lieutenant describes. But for him, this is a relatively slow process, certainly nothing like the instinctual understanding that his human colleagues seem to have.
They are interrupted by a shout up ahead. It's Mr. Sulu, his short hair already bedecked by the locals in an impromptu wig.
"Hey Arri! We'all do lower. Our captain did find a transmitter," he shouts.
Their guide, Arri, raises a hand in response – and turns to Uhura who turns to him.
Spock blinks.
"We either have to proceed to a lower altitude… or lower indicates later in time and we should postpone our search."
Uhura smiles and rests a quick hand on his arm, a sign of approval. He gestures for her to precede him down the trail, as she enthusiastically picks up where she left off.
"Well done, Sir! Now, the settlers don't only have the 'future time is downwards' base metaphor, they also have a cyclic time metaphor, and they often mix the two. Let me give you a few examples, you'll pick it up in no time…"
No time in Standard never means no time. He knows that much.
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Author's note Thanks for reading! You got all the way to the end without being scared off by the linguistics! For more on cognitive metaphor theory, google "cognitive metaphors" or "metaphor blending theory". If you hated this chapter, the next one will also be a bit language related, but far far lighter. And a bit of plot as the crew closes in on the smugglers.
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