27 KiB
[D] Prescriptivism vs. descriptivism in magical languages
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Author: u/ToaKraka https://i.imgur.com/OQGHleQ.png*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3mnhsk/d_prescriptivism_vs_descriptivism_in_magical/
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Score: 16
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Created: 2015-09-28T02:44:50
Post:
Let's say that magic can be performed through a certain language. How is the language of magic defined, though? Is the language restrained from evolving further? Or can it continue to develop, making old spellbooks less and less relevant as the words used in them fall out of date? (Can the wizards of the Real Academia Española Mágica make a killing by exploiting their monopolistic prescriptive control over the language to tweak the definitions of words every few years and sell new spellbooks to match? Or is it impossible to define the language from the top down?) If "English" is a language of magic, are there separate spellbooks for "irrespective" and "irregardless"? Does one spell work while the other fails? Or is it a popularity competition, so that each version has only partial efficacy (e.g., HPMoR's one-winged bats) until one becomes dominant and 100% effective while the other becomes disfavored and 0% effective?
What about punctuation? What about pronunciation? Does spelling matter? If a person casting in English clearly says "Febyuary" but is picturing in his mind the letters "February" as he speaks, does the spell work? Or does that one incorrect phoneme render the word unintelligible to the invisible magical infrastructure? Is a person who doesn't think with punctuation literally unable to cast a spell without writing it down? If someone writes "This, wood will catch, on fire.", does the spell succeed or fail?
A funny scenario:
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In the year 1000, the word "susurration" has been rediscovered by a magical researcher. He writes it down in his research journal (including pronunciation and part-of-speech information) and forgets about it. This is the only place where the word "susurration" is recorded, worldwide.
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In the year 1100, the researcher's journal is published--but the pencil in the original manuscript is smudged, and the word in question is printed as "susuration". The original manuscript is lost in a fire soon afterward. There is nothing on Earth with the word "susurration" on it; anyone who read the manuscript has forgotten about it.
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In the year 1200, there's a fad, in which lots of people like to use the "susuration" spell, rather than the boring old "whispering" spell. The magical language of English has replaced "susurration" with "susuration". (Or, alternatively, people are perplexed that the "susuration" spell works only when spoken, and not when written down [because the language remembers the old spelling and rejects the new spelling, but still accepts the correct pronunciation even when based on incorrect spelling--but they don't know that].)
Any opinions?
Comments:
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+26] Godric Gryffindor (3 hours later)
My secret model of how it works in HPMOR is that there are countless objective spellword-gesture combinations and a magically driven intuition for seeking them out, and people find what they're looking for in parts of the magical space resembling their own mental language. Since the possible incantation-gesture combinations are universal, a single person whose mind sought out the "Mobilicorpus" incantation can tell others about it too regardless of native language.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+6] (12 hours later)
So, then, when a spell seems to resemble a Latin word, it's actually just that Latin was guided by wizards?
I also assume that exposure to other spells seriously helps in finding new ones, because they're all part of some lost language.
u/Pluvialis [+3] Second Age Sauron (2 days later)
when a spell seems to resemble a Latin word, it's actually just that Latin was guided by wizards?
Eliezer said there are "countless objective spellword-gesture combinations", so I imagine that among the set of spellwords there just happen to be a subset that sound Latiny, and speakers of Latin-based languages tend towards discovering those spellwords.
people find what they're looking for in parts of the magical space resembling their own mental language
u/SoundLogic2236 [+3] (5 hours later)
Huh. I'm kind of curious if this will come up in your epilogue. I'm also curious-do people get blown up by there being spellword-gesture combinations that they were looking for to do safe things that are almost identical to spellword-gesture combinations that conjure antimatter? I'm trying to picture this space and kind of failing.
u/MugaSofer [+2] (7 hours later)
Huh, that's a lot closer to canon than I expected.
Are the incantation-gesture combinations really complex enough to specify the effects they produce, though?
u/alexanderwales [+9] Time flies like an arrow (12 hours later)
If I understand it correctly, the combinations don't specify the effects in any sense, they're just symbolic. So if we're using the "magic as computer programming" metaphor, the incantation+gesture combination is more like
Mobilicorpus(), a call to a function which contains something more complex and fully specified. Based on how it works in HPMOR, I think there are also parameters that get fed into the spell as well, so ...
Avadakedavra(user.emotionalState, wand.vector)Probably not actually
wand.vectorthough, because wandless casting is possible.(I have a 55,000 word story stuck in draft where this is basically how things work; it gets kicked into high gear when someone discovers a method of accessing the base language where you actually can fully specify your own spells instead of using the "known spells" like Fireball or Fox Form that were baked in as handy shortcuts.)
u/MugaSofer [+1] (13 hours later)
I suppose the "space" could just consist of a vast library of pre-rendered effects, but then what about Oogly Boogly?
u/alexanderwales [+5] Time flies like an arrow (14 hours later)
I have a few guesses that explain that scene:
Knowledge has some importance. There's a check that happens prior to spells being cast which tries to determine whether you know what you're doing.
If you gave Hermione completely incorrect information about what a spell was supposed to do, it would stop working.
If you didn't tell her at all what the spell was supposed to do, it would stop working.
If she knew in very vague terms what the spell was supposed to do, or she was only partially wrong, then the spell would work as originally described in the book, not the way she'd been told it should.
So you can't cast a spell if you are completely ignorant of what it does. The Interdict of Merlin would also probably be some internal check there.
There are clusters of similar spells with similar names, like how we might name functions
TestFunction1(),TestFunction2(), etc. if we were particularly lazy programmers. So if you say Oogely Boogely with the "wrong" vowel duration, you're actually casting a different spell within the same spell cluster.Alternately, vowel duration and other things like that might be a parameter that's fed into the spell itself and used to determine some of what it does, but isn't the full specification. If you say Oogely Boogely with different vowel lengths, it's the difference between
OogelyBoogely(3,1,1)andOogelyBoogely(3,1,2), which hits some internal logic that changes the outcome.It's hard to know without being able to do science to confirm or deny any of this though.
u/SoundLogic2236 [+2] (2 days later)
If we limit it by knowledge, that means we can potentially 'double up' spells. So we have a triplet of (belief about the spell, wand motion, words)->effect. So OogeleyBoogely(3,1,1) could trigger effects of: Bats. Explosion. Turn lead into a monkey. But no others, so as long as we remain low density on the valid triplets, we can still achieve a very big space of effects. Though I would then wonder what would happen if two wizards learned two different versions of the spell and met each other.
u/PeridexisErrant [+0] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (20 hours later)
... I have this hilarious mental image of Hermione founding the Free Magic Foundation, and insisting that the four freedoms apply to magic. Something about the hair, maybe.
Much like her campaigns for equality, nobody else understands what she's trying to do.
u/xamueljones [+1] My arch-enemy is entropy (12 hours later)
I'm pretty sure yes, because you can use the incantation to specify a specific spell just like how you can name precisely one animal species out of millions with only it's name. The gesture is used to modify the spell based on the current situation to specify the direction to cast the spell, how strong the effects should be, or duration of the spell, and other possible context-dependent effects.
All you're doing is picking one spell out of a pool of possible spells, not defining and producing a wholly new spell from scratch.
u/xamueljones [+1] My arch-enemy is entropy (12 hours later)
Huh, if people with particular mental landscapes are better "inventing" and understanding spells than others, then over the course of generations you could have a very strange culture which was influenced by the most successful spell-creators.
Also by the subtle influence of "Magic", wizards are predisposed to stick with whatever works just like finding a complete, working spell instead of learning to improve on what they first create since there was no process of improvement in the wizarding world.
u/None [+21] (38 minutes later)
This would be a language that has testable implications, right? If someone says "they" is correct for a gender-neutral singular pronoun, and someone else disagrees, it can be settled by experiment.
u/Geminii27 [+4] (5 hours later)
It depends on how the equivalent of the relevant magical language interpreter has been programmed. Any of these options are possible. You could even have purely consistent and logical rules which resulted in apparent inconsistent results because of the existence of multiple interpreters behind the scenes, and each spell invoking a particular interpreter under specific circumstances.
Such circumstances could be a mishmash of layered and half-baked rules. You might have certain spells which are tied irrevocably to a specific interpreter - perhaps one which hasn't been updated for centuries but still exists as an invokable magical pattern. You might have spells which used to be tied to an old interpreter but have been reattached to a more modern one, subtly changing the spell results in particular ways (particularly during edge cases). You might have spells which cast a certain seeking pattern into the ether when invoked, and which use the first interpreter which responds and matches the pattern (which itself may or may not have been programmed in a fragile manner).
I'm imagining a metawizard who creates a new interpreter layer which responds to all spell requests and by default passes them to the interpreter they would normally go to, but records the details transparently, and is also able (under the metawizard's control) to do other things, like redirect the spell energy to the wrong interpreter or use a built-in interpreter to create completely different spell effects (or store the energy, or backfire it). Such a metawizard might have to be fought using nonmagical tactics, or using only ancient spells which contained their own protointerpreters or wrote directly to the bare ether.
u/rpglover64 [+5] (16 hours later)
Obligatory mention of Ra, given that magic is quite literally a programming language, defined once and for all, but with the ability to define custom functions (i.e. define new words).
u/AttuneAccord [+4] (2 hours later)
I think as long as it's logically consistent, you could go with hard descriptivism, hard prescriptivism or anything in between. The Ancient Language in Eragon has elements of both – but because it ultimately ties back to the intention of the user, it ends up being something much harder to pin down, yet the system still works.
u/AKAAkira [+3] (6 hours later)
I think this is really decided by the precise mechanism of how the language interacts with the world.
One possible model is that the words act some sort of "code words" which tell the World what to effect - basically like a programming language. Another is that the words act as mental "trigger words" for the spellcaster him/herself to magically make changes to reality. The former would make the language descriptive, reliant on the exact words that the magic system would take, and the latter prescriptive, changing to whatever the individual spellcaster ends up using because only the intent will matter. (Both probably involve mana or some other phlebotinum as a limiting factor. Also, these are most likely just the extreme ends of a spectrum, with in-betweens that I'm not considering at the moment - one off the top of my head is the "magic program" that I described above, except with some kind of backdoor built in that lets certain people or things change the words that the system accepts, which would make the language entirely dependent on those "certain people or things".)
So with that in mind, the characteristics of the descriptive system would be: the language would be defined by whoever or whatever built the magic system; it is unlikely to evolve further, unless it possesses subsystems that allow for conscious change (and whoever has control of those subsystems could certainly exploit it to their own ends); and there may or may not be different words for the same effect, which again depends on whoever or whatever built the magic system. (For example, some kind of creator god made the magic system and taught it to different races to see which one could conquer the other, but taught them different sets of vocabulary for mostly the same effects because the god knew there were people savvy enough to listen and predict what spells the opposing spellcasters are using.) Pronunciation would matter to the extent that the World is sure what the spellcaster is asking for; punctuation and spelling might matter less if it's just a spell being vocalized, but will most certainly matter if it's a spell cast from some written medium. And thus it is in this kind of world that "susuration" works when spoken but not written.
(I'm going to take this opportunity to bring up one of my favourite fanfics, https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8679666/1/Fairy-Dance-of-Death (Sword Art Online fanfic) by Catsy, since it has the most fleshed-out example of the "descriptive" kind of magic system I'm talking about.)
By the way, when I mention the "World" here, I guess you could call it kind of like a "server" that generates reality - that's the analogy I have for it, anyway, though it also might possibly be a god flat-out. It may even be human culture itself, or the collective human will - in which case an incantation must be recognized by other humans, in both correct formation/pronunciation and expected result, to be able to work, and only through a change in this collective will could a previous entry in its dictionary be mutated...but that's getting away from the "extreme end" example I was talking about before.
On the other hand, the vocabulary in a prescriptive system of magic would be initially defined by tradition. (Though in this kind of system, the very fact that language is favoured as the instrument to dictate magic might become a matter of coincidence. It's not any less likely that holding/wearing certain items, or making blinking gestures even, would help manipulate mana or whatever phlebotinum is being used in the right way. Maybe whoever first used magic in this kind of world used a word from his native tongue to focus his intention. Or maybe this person just thought yelling something would help, which ended up later being transformed into a concrete word that other people used.) Afterwords, and assuming people in-universe don't realize the nature of this type of system, the "official" words may change over centuries as it goes through successive generations of teachers and differing accents, until in the end they end up with something completely different from what they were at first (until the people in-universe do realize the nature of this type of system, at any rate). In this case, pronunciation, punctuation, etc. won't matter so long as the intent is there, so words could be replaced all the time, including poor "susurration".
But I think I should point out that a system leaning heavily on this side of the spectrum most likely won't develop runes, glyphs, and the like. There would be no meaning in shaped ink on paper if something about the World can't ascertain that the shapes itself were intended for magical effects. A society based around this system would most likely skip the squiggles and go straight into Enchanted Magical Item territory, not Items with Magical Runes Carved On Them.
In the end, yeah, a given magic system in a work could go either way or anywhere in-between so long as it doesn't contradict itself. But the nature of its use will always be an indicator to the nature of its self.
Phew, wrote quite a bit. I hope I didn't meander too much.
u/MadScientist14159 [+3] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (8 hours later)
This is essentially how magic works in a H (arry) P (otter) Lovecraft crossover fic that I'm sort of writing, and never intend to publish.
In the story, Cthulhu was rising early, and Nyarlathotep tricked some ancient Phoenician sailors into landing on R'lyeh and binding him into a prison Nyarlathotep built for them. Then they renamed the continent 'Atlantis' and started utilising the obedience-compelling nature of the prison to make Cthulhu do stuff for them. An incantation is just a sentence in atlantean telling Cthulhu what to do.
Of course, because Nyarlathotep never does anything out of the goodness of his (does he even have a heart?) the real purpose of the whole thing was to drain enough of Cthulhu's power that R'lyeh would sink again, which, of course, killed all the atlanteans who couldn't escape in time.
But getting back on topic, most of the atlantean language is lost, because there was never an atlantean rosetta stone, and 99+% of their relics were on R'lyeh. It would be entirely possible for a witch or wizard to cast a spell that raises the dead, turns back aging, or permanently transfigures something into food. If they knew the right words/grammar to ask for it. (Although, there are actually spells that permanently transfigure other objects known to modern mages, but attempts to merge these incantation structures with the spell to temporarily transfigure something into food have failed because food items are in a different noun-group and follow different grammatical syntax.)
The atlantean language used in incantations is the language the atlanteans taught Cthulhu, updating as it evolved, until R'lyeh sank, at which point no one could access Cthulhu's prison to let him understand newer versions of the language.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+2] Champion of Justice and Reason (10 hours later)
OMG that sounds awesome! If you ever change your mind about sharing that, I'd love to read it, and so would a lot of people here I'm sure. There's just not enough rational fiction out there, and the more we get the better. But no pressure, if you don't want to share it that's totally fine, lol.
u/MadScientist14159 [+5] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (11 hours later)
Also, when I say a fic, I actually mean a few:
Luna Lovegood and the Mountains of Madness
The year before she's due to start hogwarts, Luna, Xenophillius, and her friend Ginny Weasley go on holiday. And by "holiday", Ginny didn't realise that Luna meant a year long expidition to the antarctic in search of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks. Or as they're better known: Elder Things.
Ginny Weasley and the Chamber of Yig
It isn't Tom Riddle's Diary that Lucius Malfoy slips into Ginny's Cauldron before her first year at Hogwarts, it's Abdul Alhazred's.
Sirius Black and the Prisoners of Azathoth
Deep in the darkest bowels of Azkaban, Sirius Black discovers a plot to wake the demon sultan and release the convicts from their hell by ending reality. With the help of a mysterious egyptian wizard, Sirius races to escape and warn the outside world.
Gabrielle Delacour and the Shadow Over Hogsmede
After Fleur fails to rescue her during the second task of the tri-wizard tournament, Gabrielle decides she'll just have to rescue herself. But why, if this is a deep one village, isn't she the only human here?
Harry Potter and the Nice Relaxing Year Where He Only Had To Fight Voldemort Instead of FUCKING Old Ones
Oh wait, nevermind. Umbridge looks unusually toad-like. I see where this is going...
u/PeridexisErrant [+2] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (20 hours later)
Please publish eventually... the premise is fantastic.
u/MadScientist14159 [+1] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (20 hours later)
I think I'll improve my writing a lot and rewrite it first.
Trust me, as good as it sounds, if you read what I have now you wouldn't like it. The main reason I'm doing NaClO is to get practice writing so I can do other stuff at higher quality. And my current draft of that is unpublishable...
u/PeridexisErrant [+1] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (21 hours later)
Fair enough; at least you're writing. I just sit on ideas for years...
If you want an editor, I'd be happy to help.
u/MadScientist14159 [+1] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (10 hours later)
Despite the awesome sounding premise, I'm not actually a very good writer yet. Just ask my betas for Sodium Hypochlorite :P.
u/TotesMessenger [+2] (10 hours later)
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u/Carl_Maxwell [+2] (7 days later)
I think the normal thing in most fantasy is that the language that can be used to cast spells is the language that was made at the creation of the universe, that it is woven into the natural laws of the universe. The effects of a given series of words is as definite as are the effects of gravity.
Basically the creator-deity (or deities) wrote an interpreter for a programming language into the natural laws of the universe. It (he/she/they) may then have used said interpreter to create the rest of the universe.
In these situations, in order to change the effect of a word, you would need to alter the natural laws of the universe.
This is related to the ideas of things like Supernal, truenames, 'Let there be light', etc.
It is easy to imagine writing a 'universal translator' into the interpreter so that regular people could use magic in any language with which they are familiar. In that case the quality of the universal translator would determine the answers to your questions.
Assuming it were a perfect universal translator, it would take into account regional dialects, and would understand what a person was saying as long as they didn't make any mistakes. It wouldn't matter how the Oxford English Dictionary defined a word, but instead local usages would take precedent. Specifically those usages which the speaker had actually been exposed to.
Potentially it could just read their mind and discover the intentions behind what they're saying. Or it could scan the structure of their mind to figure out how they would interpret what they were saying.
u/autowikiabot [+1] (7 days later)
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#### Supernal (from Dnd4 wikia):
The Supernal language is the language used by the gods, shared with angelic servants and also known by devils. It is written in a system of hieroglyphics. It is a universal language, where listeners who don't speak supernal will understand the words as if the speaker used their own languages. The gods and angels may choose to disguise their speech if this is not desired. Additionally, supernal contains words of power, which include the raw magic of creation. [DMG:171] Each race heard the supernal language in a different way, resulting in the various languages among the different races. This language cannot be selected as a 1st-level character, but could be learned through the linguist feat. Should a mortal learn the language, they don't gain the ability to be universally understood, nor can they exploit the words of power. ^Interesting: ^Languages ^| ^Linguist ^| [^Exalted ^Angel](https://dnd4.wikia.com/wiki/Exalted Angel) ^| [^Bazaar ^of ^the ^Bizarre](https://dnd4.wikia.com/wiki/Bazaar of the Bizarre)
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u/Carl_Maxwell [+1] (7 days later)
You have failed at paragraphs, /u/autowikiabot.
u/ysadamsson [+1] (20 hours later)
Well, as a linguist, if our magical language is taken descriptively, you can basically throw the written language out the window. The only language that really exists is the one that is spoken.