The Neo-dolphin Languages of
David Brin's
Startide Rising

In his Startide Rising (and other works of the Uplift universe, Sundiver, The Uplift War, Brightness Reef, and Heaven's Reach), David Brin has utilized many of the linguistic concepts discussed by Walter Meyers in his Aliens and Linguists. Unlike many of the science fiction authors Meyer's calls upon to demonstrate how linguistics has been misused in science fiction, Brin fares quite favorably. Many of the main characters of Startide Rising are "Uplifted" Neo- dolphins, i.e. members of the species tursiops amicus, or "friendly dolphin", that man has created through selective breeding and genetic engineering of natural tursiops truncatus, or bottlenose dolphin. In Uplifting the dolphins, one of the major hurdles to be overcome was a problem of language: the natural pseudo-language of natural dolphins, called Primal, is a "language" lacking in many of the necessary grammatical features of a true language. And due to the dolphin's evolution in a marine environment, dolphins' natural logic is three-valued - a feature that is maintained in the structure of Trinary (hence the name), the language intermediate between Primal and Anglic, a language designed for the Neo-dolphin's physiology, but that has the full gramamtical structure of English. It is Anglic that allows Neo-dolphins to plan, analyze, and think in a rational way approximating the rational thinking of homo sapiens. While the Uplifting of the Neo-dolphins is already nearly complete during the time of Startide Rising, linguistic issues revolving about the Neo-dolphin's Primal and Trinary heritage are major concerns of the novel. In addition there other ancillary linguistic issues raised by Brin, all handled as thoughtfully by Brin, but before discussing any of these a short synopsis of the Uplift universe and the plot of Startide Rising is in order.

Approximately 3 billion years ago, a race, now referred to as the Progenitors, developed the ability to travel between the stars. As they explored the Five Galaxies, i.e. the Milky Way, the Greater and Lesser Magellanic Clouds, Andromeda, and M-33, they discovered many pre-sentient and pre-tool-using animals on both small, warm, rocky worlds possessing oxygen atmospheres, like Earth, and on large, relatively cold, gas worlds made mostly of hydrogen, like Jupiter. Many of these animals had the potential to use language and tools, and the Progenitors, using advanced genetic engineering, Uplifted these species so that they might likewise travel the stars, searching for species ripe for Uplift, and thereby expand the community of sentient races of the Five Galaxies.

The Progenitors helped define this community by creating various great Institutes, including: the Library Institute, repository of all the knowledge accumulated by the races of the Five Galaxies; the Institute of Uplift, charged with ensuring that species undergoing Uplift are treated fairly and not modified too much from their native standard; the Institute of Civilized Warfare, guaranteeing that conflicts between races observe rules that prevent extinction sentient and pre-sentient races and the decimation of planetary ecosystems; and the Institute of Migration, responsible for the preservation of planetary of ecosystems while occupied by a star-faring species, organizing the migration of oxygen-breathers and hydrogen-breathers to reduce the likelihood of conflict between the two radically different life-forms, and thereby, to allow both oxygen and hydrogen worlds to "lie fallow" so that new pre-sentient races for future Uplift might evolve without interference from current, star-faring tenants.

The Progenitors have, in the intervening 3 billion years, disappeared into the mist of legend, myth and superstition. The Galactic Society they created, however, endures as the tradition of Uplift continues: a pre-sentient race is discovered by a Patron race and Uplifted, serves out (as payment for the gift of sentience) a 100,000 year Indenture as a Client Species to their Patron race, and then hopefully goes onto discover a pre-sentient race which they Uplift and to whom they serve as Patrons. A specie's status in this society is determined, to a large extent, by who Uplifted the species and how many Clients the species has Uplifted. And as a result, one of the foremost concerns of all Galactic Society is the preservation and conservation of planetary ecosystems, for it is only through unhindered evolution (up to the point of pre-sentient and pre-tool-use where Galactic evolutionary theory asserts evolution necessarily and naturally stops) requiring viable planetary ecosystems that new races evolve to point where they can be Uplifted and brought into Galactic Society.

This is the Galactic Society into which Humanity finds itself thrust in the mid 23^rd century, when one of the first human slow-ships encounters a galactic ship crewed by the Tymbrimi, a bipedal, oxygen-breathing race Uplifted hundreds of thousands of years ago, and one of the few races to subsequently befriend Humanity. Many Galactic races hold nothing but antipathy for the species of Terra, for Humanity appears contradict all Galactic knowledge and understanding of evolutionary theory: it appears that Humans have no Patron, and to have developed, primitive though it may be, sentience and starflight without the intervention of any Patron. Worse, wolflings though they are, Humanity had already embarked upon the tradition of Uplift before encountering Galactic Society by Uplifting both the Chimpanzees and the Dolphins - thereby granting themselves a status as Patrons that many races Uplifted themselves by well established Patron races of Galactic Society have yet to achieve, though they themselves have been members of Galactic Society for hundreds of thousands and even millions of years.

Startide Rising is the story of how, in the mid 25^th century, after discovering a fleet of incredibly old, moon-sized starships in an infrequently visited region of space, the first mostly Neo-dolphin-crewed and solely Neo-dolphin-commanded starship, the Streaker, is hunted by war-fleets of fanatical Galactic races who think the Streaker's discovery might presage the Progenitor's fabled return to Galactic Society. Crewed by some 60 Neo-dolphins, 5 humans, and 1 Neo-chimpanzee, and commanded by the Neo-dolphin Captain Creideiki, the Streaker flees an ambush following their discovery and hides on the water-world of Kithrup. Creideiki chooses Kithrup because it is one large ocean dotted by innumerable small islands on which the mostly Neo-dolphin crew can work to repair the Streaker in their natural environment, and because Kithrup has a wealth of easily accessible metal compounds. Being new to sentience, however, Neo-dolphins can suffer from a stress induced condition called stress-atavism in which Neo-dolphins lose the use of Anglic, a language designed for use by Neo-dolphins which sounds not very much like English, but which uses strict English grammar, and reinforces the cause-and-effect, binary logic necessary for human-rational, tool-using thought. The Streaker's discovery and subsequent hunt of the Streaker by Galactic fanatics was an unanticipated situation for the Terragen Council, Humaity's ruling body comprised of humans, chimpanzees, and Neo-dolphins, and turns out to be too much for many of the Streaker's Neo-dolphin crew. As many of the Neo-dolphin crew begin to suffer from stress-atavism, Creideiki's second-in-command, Takkata-Jim, who is also a Neo-dolphin, sees in the stress-atavism of his fellow Neo-dolphins an undeniable statement that Neo-dolphins, and, for that matter, their human Patrons, are not ready to play with the big boys of Galactic Society. Even with Tom Orley and Gillian Baskin, two Terragen agents of almost legendary repute, supporting Creideiki's plan to repair the Streaker and flee once again from the Galactic fleets, Takkata-Jim fears Creideiki's plan can be nothing but suicide. So, implicitly supported by Ignacio Metz, a human Uplift expert, Takkata-Jim turns a blind eye when one of the crew, K'tha-Jon, a Neo-dolphin who Takkata-Jim suspects is a special project for Metz, sabotages a piece of equipment so that it destroys most of the Uplifted speech-centers of Creideiki's brain. Thus incapacitated, Creideiki loses almost all of his facility with Anglic, but learns that he can utilize the pre-Uplift speech-centers of his brain to continue using Primal, the not-quite-a-language of pre-Uplifted Neo-dolphins. In struggling to regain what speech ability he still has, Creideiki learns to understand the language of a race that the Library Institute claims had come to Kithrup to die, the Karrank%. The Karrank% were horribly mistreated during their Uplift, I.e. modified far beyond the parameters allowed by the Institute for Uplift, and when this was discovered by the Institute, their Indenture to their Patrons was ended, and they were given an indefinite lease on Kithrup, where it was assumed that they would die out and become extinct in a relatively short period of time. But they continued to modify themselves until they reached a physical form and biology they could tolerate, a fact the Library Institute appears not to know. While the crew of Streaker struggle with stress-atavism and the loss of their captain, the various fanatic races hunting the Streaker battle amongst themselves to determine who it is that will take control of the Streaker and to whom her crew will divulge the secrets they are clearly hoarding concerning the fleet of ancient starships. With the Karrank%'s not very willing help, and just as two of the Galactic races have achieved undeniable ascendancy overhead, Creideiki, Gillian Baskin, and Tom Orley are able to get the Streaker off Kithrup and past the remnants of the Galactic battle fleets after necessary repairs completed.

Brin intimates that the Primal of fallow (un-Uplifted) Dolphins is not a true language, that is really not much more than means for coordinating and directing the actions of a pod (a group of dolphins in the wild) while hunting, attracting attention during mating, alerting other members of the pod to danger, and summoning help from members of the pod when a dolphin was in distress. As such, it lacked a full grammar and was incapable of encoding notions of causality, temporal relationships, and thus, as Creideiki implies prevented dolphins from being "…planning [unless otherwise noted, italics within quotes are Brin's] creatures" (pg. 111).

Creideiki discusses this aspect of Primal during a lesson in Keneenk which he is gives to help boost morale and help interested Neo-dolphin members of Streaker crew to better their rational faculties.

"Keneenk is a study of relationships ," he told his audience. "That part comes from our dolphin heritage. Keneenk is also a study of strict comparisons . This second part we learned from our human patrons. Keneenk is a synthesis of two world-views, much as we ourselves are." (pg. 100)

Dolphins are capable of binocular vision in both water and in air as the rest on or jump above the surface of the water. But as anyone who has ever swum both with and without goggles knows, the index of refraction of water is different from that of air. Thus, for humans, who did not evolve in both environments, vision under water is not nearly so good as it is air. On the other hand, dolphins, who most likely returned to the marine environment after spending a good deal of time evolving as land-dwelling mammals (hence, the dolphin's pectoral fins, i.e. the fins on either side of the of the body toward the front are actually comprised of five digits, one of which has three jointed bones, and four which have four jointed bones, much like the human hand), can extend the lenses of their eyes for vision in air, and recess the lenses for vision comparable visual acuity in water.

Brin implies that dolphin evolution was actually evolution in three distinct environments: one below the water-air interface at the surface in the water, one at the surface, where dolphins spend a good amount of their due to being air breathers, and one above the surface in the air. Implicitly invoking the Worf-Sapir hypothesis, Brin gives the natural "logic" of fallow dolphins a three-value aspect. Creideiki asks his students,

"How does a cetacean [cetacea is the taxonomical Order including porpoises, dolphins and whales], whose heritage, who very brain is built on intuitive thinking, learn to analyze a complex, piece by piece? Sometimes the key to an answer is found in the way you formulate the question. I'll leave you all today with an exercise for you idle moments.

"Try to state the problem of reflections from the surface of water in Trinary…in a way that demands not a single answer, or a three-level opposition, but a plain listing of the reflections that are possible."

He saw several of the fen [25^th century English for more than one Neo-dolphin] frown uncomfortably.

The captain smiled reassuringly. "I know it sounds difficult, and I will not ask you to recite today. But just to show you it can be done, accept the echo of this dream."

* A layer divides
sky-star - Sea-star

* What comes to us
At a narrow angle

* The huntsqueaking starcatching octopus
Reflects!

* The night-calling, star-following tern
Reflects!

* The star-twinkle in my lover's eye
Reflects!

* The sun, soundless, roaring showoff-
Reflects! *
(pg. 111-112)

Previous to the Trinary haiku, Creideiki had been speaking Anglic, of which Brin says,

The most formal Anglic, spoken carefully by a neo-dolphin, would be difficult for a human raised only in Man-English to understand. The syntax and many root words were the same. But a pre-spaceflight Londoner would have found the sounds as strange as the voices that spoke them.

The [neo-]dolphin's modified blowhole provided whistles, squawks, vowels and a few consonant. Sonar clicks and many other sounds came from complex resonant cavities inside the skull.

In speech, these separate contributions were sometimes in phase and sometimes not. Even at the best of times, these were stretched sibilants stuttered t's, and groaned vowels. Speech was an art. (pg. 150)

"Akki," Gillian began. "I'm going to ask you questions phrased to take three-level answers. Please spare artistry for brevity in answering."

. Gladly, if I can, thought Akki thought. He had often wondered why it was so hard to hold direct conversations in Trinary without beating around the bush in poetic allusion. It was his native tongue as much as Anglic was, and still he was frustrated by its resistance to shortcuts.

"Akki, does Creideiki ignore the Fish-of-Dreaming, does he chase them, or does he feed them?"

Gillian was asking if Creideiki was still functioning as a tool user, was he lost to injury, drifting in an unconscious dream-hunt, or, worse, was he dead. Somehow, Gillian had immediately gone right to the heart of the matter. Akki was able to answer with blessed brevity.

* Chasing squid---
In deepest water *
(pg. 219)

Akki breathed slowly for calm. A teaching rhyme of Keneenk ran through his mind.

* "Past" is what once was---
A remnant that's called memory…
* In it lie the "causes"---
Of what now is."

* "Future" is what will be---
Envisioned, seldom seen….
* In it lie "results"---
Of what now is.

* "Present" is that narrowness----
Passing, always flickering…
* Proof of the "joke"----
Of "what now is ."

Past, future, and present were among the hardest ideas to express explicitly in Trinary. The rhyme was meant to teach causation as the human patrons, and most other sophonts saw it, while keeping essential faith with the cetacean view of life. (pg. 217)

Trinary was for relaxation, for imagery and personal matters. It replaced and greatly expanded on Primal Delphin. But Anglic linked the neo-dolpin to the world of cause and effect.

Anglic was a language of compromise between the vocal abilities of two races - between the hands-and-fire world of Men and the drifting legends of the Whale Dream. Speaking it, a dolphin could equal most humans in analytical thought, consider past and future, make schemes, use tools, and fight wars.
…
Two neo-dolphins alone together might speak Anglic for concentration, but not care if the sounds resembled English words. They would drift into frequencies beyond human hearing, and consonants would virtually disappear.

Keneenk allowed this. It was the semantics that counted. If the grammar, the two-level logic, the time-orientation were Anglic, pragmatic results were all that mattered.
(pg. 150)

Toshio groaned. Of course he knew about rescue fever, in which panic and fear washed aside the veneer of civilization, leaving a cetacean with only one thought - to save his comrades, whatever the personal risk. Every few years the tragedy struck even the highly advanced fins of Calafia [a Terran colony-world where Toshio was born and raised]. Akki had told him, once, that sometimes the sea itself seemed to be calling for help. Some humans claimed to have felt it too - particularly those who took dolphin RNA in the rites of the Dreamer Cult.

Once upon a time the Tursiops, or bottlenose dolphin, had been about the least likely cetacean to beach himself. But genetic engineering had upset the balance somewhere. As the genes of other species were spliced onto the basic Tursiops model, a few things had been thrown out of kilter. For three generations human geneticists had been working on the problem. But for now the fins swam along a knife edge, where irrationality was a perpetual danger. (pg. 46-47)

* Child drowning --- child in danger! *
* Child drowning --- child's distress *
* Human child --- in need of savior *
* Human child --- come do your best! *

He repeated the call over and over, whistling through lips dry with shame. The nursery rhyme was taught to all the children of Calafia. Any kid past the age of nine who used it usually pleaded for a transfer to another island to escape the subsequent razzing. The were more dignified ways an adult called for help. (pg. 49)

# where---where---where child is---where child is? where #

Each time they went underwater, Toshio tried to call out.

"You're sentient," he gasped. "Damn you Keepiru… you're… you're a starship pilot!"

He knew he should be doing his coaxing in Trinary, but it was no use even trying, when he could barely hold on for dear life.

"You pea-brained… phallic symbol!" he screamed as the water slammed against him. "You over-rated fish! You're killing me you goddamed… The Eatees own Calafia by now because you fins can't hold your tongues! We never should have taken you along into space!"

The words were hateful. Contemptuous. At least Keepiru seemed to have heard …

Only eighteen cases were known, in forty generations of dolphin uplift, in which a fin had attacked a human with murderous intent. In each case, every fin related to the perpetrator had been sterilized. Still, Toshio expected to be crushed at any instant.
…
A large piece of flotsam floated near him. It took him a moment to realize that it was Keepiru.

Toshio treaded water as he opened his faceplate.

Keepiru turned slightly to one side, and one dark eye looked up at Toshio. The bulge at the top of the cetacean's head, where human meddling had created a vocal apparatus from the former blowhole, gave out a long, soft warbling sound.

Toshio couldn't be certain it was just a sigh. It might have been an apology in Primal Delphin. The possibility alone was enough to make him angry.

"Can that crap! I just want to know one thing. Do I have to send you back to the ship? Or do you think you can stay sentient long enough to help me? Answer in Anglic, and it had better be grammatically correct!"

Keepiru moaned in pure anguish. After a moment of heavy breathing he finally spoke, quite slowly.

"Don’t send me back. They're still calling for help! I will do what you ask-k-k!" (pg. 52)

# Glory! Is, is,
Glory!

# Biting is and Glory!
Females submit!

# A new bull is! is! #

Brin makes the 'primitiveness' of Primal apparent in the lack of English syntax and the simplicity of the thoughts expressed in Primal utterances.

The qualitative differences in the way Neo-dolphins think when using the three different fen languages, Primal, Trinary, and Anglic, seem borne of the Worf-Sapir hypothesis. Brin phrases many Primal utterances so that three simple, linked thoughts are expressed in each utterance, and this clearly a forerunner of the "three-level opposition" found in the far more syntactically and intellectually complex Trinary utterances. And the implication is that this triplet issue arises from the fact that fallow dolphins evolved in a marine environment where there are three distinct regions, in the water, on the surface, and in the air above the water.

There are other examples of linguistic issues in Startide Rising, e.g. variations of language over time: there are new terms which are not necessarily based on advances in technology. "Man" and "woman" have been replaced by "mel" and "fem", leaving "Man" with the "M" capitalized as a plural meaning mankind with no hint of implicit gender bias. The Library Branch computers supplied to Earth, Terran colonies and starships seem strangely deficient. The artificial intelligences in each that serve as librarians seem oddly incapable of dealing with English, or any Terran tongue for that matter. Officials of the Library Institute claim that, due to the chaotic and poorly structured nature of Terran languages compared to the eleven or twelve languages in use by all the thousands of races of Galactic Society, translation is problematic. But as Gillian realizes late in the novel, there must be more to it than that. After all, she and Tom Orley speak four or five Galactic tongues each, and have no trouble translating their wolfling English thoughts into any of the Galactic tongues they know. There are vodors, or translation devices, into which a sophont can speak, and which will translate his/her/its speech, but these devices must be programmed ahead of time with the correct translation software, and it is clear that these translation softwares are complicated and time-consuming to produce. Brin makes use of telepathy, but not as a crutch for overcoming linguistic problems, but as a means communicate between people over vast distances who already speak the same language. Each of these linguistic issues, to the extent it is important to the story, are well thought out are not violate any of the rules of good linguistics laid out by Meyers.

But none of these issues come close to the importance of the Neo-dolphin languages in the story, and it is these Neo-dolphin languages that make the story work. Brin's Neo-dolphins are alien in a believable and engaging way that so many of the aliens of much science-fiction simply are not. These Neo-dolphins are not simply "funny shaped, little men", but instead completely alien for all that they evolved, mostly on their own, right here on Earth. Even so, in the Postscript, Brin makes no pretense that his Primal or Trinary share anything in common with the language, semi-language, or animal clicking, squealing and popping of actual dolphins in today's oceans. But as he concludes the Postscript:

The world's many paths diverge, in both reality and imagination. The creatures of this novel are all fanciful. But it may happen that some of our fellow mammals will one day be our partners. We owe it to that possible future to let their potential survive.