@coriander i just refused to engage critically with the linguistics of arrival when i watched it; i otherwise liked it too much
@aescling Yeah honestly as long as you don't think too much about that, it's phenomenal
The problem is "that" is the foundational conceit of the film
@coriander yeah it’s a big purroblem fur sure
@coriander it is absolutely worth interpreting the shapir-whorf hypothesis but using such a purrepawstrous purremise as your vehicle fur it just does not work
@coriander it would be a lot better if it did not try to say anything about language
@coriander like even the idea that human language is “linear” is Extremely contestable
@coriander it is mediated by a form of communication that is linear but it is absolutely not clear that the underlying mechanisms, internal representation, whatever are. linguists generally do not model language in a way that can be remotely considered linear at all
@aescling @coriander and i think it’s easy to argue that paralinguistic cues are signalled along a different axis than syntactic structures so it is multidimensional in that sense too