七肢桶的文字让推理以图形同时出现

《你一生的故事》先把说话和书写拆成两套语言。七肢桶不把文字当成语音的记录，书写有自己的结构和认知用途。

“Hold on a second. Why use two languages when one would suffice? That seems unnecessarily hard to learn.” “Like English spelling?” I said. “Ease of learning isn’t the primary force in language evolution. For the heptapods, writing and speech may play such different cultural or cognitive roles that using separate languages makes more sense than using different forms of the same one.” He considered it. “I see what you mean. Maybe they think our form of writing is redundant, like we’re wasting a second communications channel.” (Location 1826)

一个 semagram 不能像字母那样逐段拆开。曲率、粗细、波动方式、部件之间的距离与朝向都能参与变形，意义分布在完整图形内部。

Depending on a semagram’s declension, inflections could be indicated by varying a certain stroke’s curvature, or its thickness, or its manner of undulation; or by varying the relative sizes of two radicals, or their relative distance to another radical, or their orientations; or various other means. These were non-segmental graphemes; they couldn’t be isolated from the rest of a semagram (Location 1891)

索绪尔认为符号的价值来自它在整个系统中的关系。semagram 与此有相通处，但关系所在的尺度更小：一条笔画的变化不能从完整图形中孤立出来理解。

Louise 原本就对没有内在声音的思考感兴趣。她认识一位聋人父母的孩子，对方有时用美国手语思考。

The idea of thinking in a linguistic yet non-phonological mode always intrigued me. I had a friend born of Deaf parents; he grew up using American Sign Language, and he told me that he often thought in ASL instead of English. I used to wonder what it was like to have one’s thoughts be manually coded, to reason using an inner pair of hands instead of an inner voice. (Location 2104)

熟悉 Heptapod B 以后，她的推理不再总以声音排成前后相继的句子。完整图形一次出现，前提与结论没有固定方向，也没有一列向前运行的 train of thought。

With Heptapod B, I was experiencing something just as foreign: my thoughts were becoming graphically coded. There were trancelike moments during the day when my thoughts weren’t expressed with my internal voice; instead, I saw semagrams with my mind’s eye, sprouting like frost on a windowpane. As I grew more fluent, semagraphic designs would appear fully formed, articulating even complex ideas all at once. My thought processes weren’t moving any faster as a result, though. Instead of racing forward, my mind hung balanced on the symmetry underlying the semagrams. The semagrams seemed to be something more than language; they were almost like mandalas. I found myself in a meditative state, contemplating the way in which premises and conclusions were interchangeable. There was no direction inherent in the way propositions were connected, no “train of thought” moving along a particular route; all the components in an act of reasoning were equally powerful, all having identical precedence. (Location 2107)

这可以和 新话想取消的不是词，是思想 对照。新话假定删掉词便能关闭某些思想；Ted Chiang 写得更谨慎，一套语言能改变思考经常采用的形式，却没有把原有意识彻底抹掉。Louise 最后仍把自己称作两种世界观的混合物。

Even though I’m proficient with Heptapod B, I know I don’t experience reality the way a heptapod does. My mind was cast in the mold of human, sequential languages, and no amount of immersion in an alien language can completely reshape it. My worldview is an amalgam of human and heptapod. (Location 2332)

内化的符号系统可以减少对外部信息的依赖 讨论人把语言、音乐或数学内化以后，如何得到一套可在意识内部调用的材料。这里多出一步：符号系统的组织方式也会影响推理以何种次序和形态出现。

这套文字的特别之处不在于难懂，在于它取消了顺序。 一句话不是一个词接一个词地展开，是整幅图一次成立，所以写下它之前就得知道整句话的样子。

信息存在于组合方式，而不在单个载体 是它成立的前提：意义出现在排列关系里，而七肢桶的排列是二维的，于是"先后"这件事从语义里消失了。思想压缩：复杂表达有时意味着理解尚未完成 从另一头说，能一次说清楚，往往说明已经想透了。

各种语言里的大雨 和 在另一种语言中重生 讲的是语言差异在人类范围内能有多大，而姜峯楠做的是把这个尺度推到人类之外，看还剩下什么是必然的。 ——收入 读书笔记 · 一得

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