ConLang for a pet that talks through buttons...?

Question

Talking Pets...?

I am fascinated (while skeptical) of the 'talking pet' audio-button trend.

For reference, this video shows a woman talking to her cat about a storm. The video has been edited to show the cat pressing specific buttons on a floor mat, ostensibly communicating his distress as she tries to comfort him.

Each button plays an audio recording of a single word spoken by the woman. I count 47 buttons on the mat. The cat presses:

Outside....
Mom. Window....
No. Window....
Outside. Noise. Later. Noise. Look. Noise.... Look....

Clever Hans and Koko the Gorilla

There is a long history of animal-communication fakery. A skeptic will notice the woman is doing a lot of narrative heavy-lifting, repeating back what she thinks the cat is saying but in fluent English. The cat is receiving attention and comfort after pressing the buttons, and we can't see what other buttons might have been pressed between edits.

Lastly, even if the cat has a grasp on spoken language, his sentences are 2 words (maybe), and he isn't saying anything useful:
Murderer. In. Closet. Run.... As a character, he is more like the neurotic passenger on a sinking ship who keeps shouting that the ship is sinking.

To be fair, I find myself mentally editing the cat's intent vs the buttons he actually pressed. I thought the cat hit 'Later' by mistake, and I mentally removed it from the sequence – He is so urgently warning his 'mom' about the storm he mistypes in panic, LOL. It's a small leap to believe the woman has edited out parts of the video that don't align with what she thinks the cat intended to say, that might be generous but I'm willing to suspend disbelief.

My bias to want the communication to make sense is very strong, but there is nothing in the video that can't also be explained by a pet that expects to receive praise and attention when he stands on any random button, and a woman who is proud of her cat for expressing himself through the tools she taught him to use. We don't need science fiction for the actions and emotions to feel true. Therefore this is a Writing question, not World Building.

ConLang for Pets?

What makes the 'scene' interesting is the womans attempt to create a compound-word from the existing buttons. She offers 'Outside-Ouch' as a conlang to represent the storm.

I've seen other 'talking pet' videos where 2-words are compounded to (apparently) reveal a deeper understanding of a concept – sometimes via a poetic interpretation or an associated meaning that seems evidence of a creative mind.

So here's my question: How do I create a ConLang for pets that stays within skeptical reality? How many word-buttons are believable, and how do I arrive at those (47) words?

No doubt I will need to work backwards from some dramatically ambiguous communication scenes, but trying to avoid sci-fi and magical interpretations, I need something based on reality.

Answer 1

Start by putting aside your preconceptions of what constitutes "language", and think about communication, and the buttons start feeling less magical. Humans have been communicating with pets for centuries - sheepdogs can be given signals to perform specific maneuvres, hunting dogs can indicate the location of prey, and so on.

For the convenience of humans, we often base the signals we give to dogs on simple words or phrases in our own language, but the dog isn't "learning the language" in the way a human child does. The buttons are an extension of that in the other direction: giving the dog or cat a set of signals they can give back to us, and for our convenience basing those signals on our language.

For some interesting discussion of the buttons, listen to or read the transcript of this two-part podcast: Allusionist 204. Lexicat, part 1; Allusionist 205. Lexicat, part 2: now with added Dog

You could probably find a forum for people experimenting with these buttons and ask for some examples of how their animals use them. Some key points, as I understand the current state of research:

• There won't be a universal "dog language" and "cat language"; the meanings are essentially negotiated between a specific human and their animal.
• There won't be a specific "grammar", with concepts like "noun" and "adjective". It's more like the symbolism in a painting: each button is associated with meanings, and combinations of buttons communicate the overlap between those meanings.
• The actual English (or other human language) words are chosen by the human. That tends to lead to lots of words that the human thinks of as "nouns" (e.g. "toy", "food") or active verbs (e.g. "fetch"), because they're easier to create an initial set of meanings for. These will then evolve in use to cover a whole concept, that in a human language would use related words and phrases.
• The use of every button has to be practiced by the pet and their human, so needs to be for a concept that comes up frequently. The pet's needs and emotions, and maybe the human's needs and emotions, might come into this; things the pet has never seen before won't have buttons.

So, your example of "Murderer. In. Closet. Run" isn't plausible for a couple of reasons:

• Why would someone add a specific button for "murderer", and how would the pet come to associate that with anything? The same, to a lesser extent, for "Run".
• The word "in" is a complex part of English grammar, which the pet is unlikely to learn. More likely, the button transcribed as "Closet" has meanings of "in the closet", "into the closet", "thing that is normally found in the closet".

A more likely "sentence" (remember, this is just a transcript of buttons being pressed) might be:

Stranger. Scared. Closet. Scared. Outside.

Answer 2

There is quite a lot of research into human-animal communication, including how many human words some dogs can learn (apparently 1,022) and how many different meows of cats with different meanings a computer algorithm can distinguish (21). Research on animal language and animal communication might also be of interest.

Start with the linked Wikipedia articles and use scholarly search engines such as Google Scholar to learn as much about these topics as necessary.

Based on this knowledge of the reality of human-animal and animal-animal communication (as scientists currently understand it) you can then create a plausible conlang for your species.

It might be especially relevant for you to understand how researchers design and conduct experiments to reliably verify, for example, how many words a dog can learn. Those videos you mention aren't science.

Answer 3

Random buttons are highly unlikely; the conjunction of "outside noise" is highly likely to be related to thunder.

And the sequence "outside, noise, later, noise" can be interpreted to indicate there is repeated noise outside (multiple instances of thunder separated by time).

With 47 buttons, pressing at random or from experience would be unlikely to include such on-topic related words. I'd expect to see "food", "treat", "water", "pet me" etc to appear in a random pressing, the kinds of buttons that return a reward. The button "Outside" was probably intended so the cat could request to go outside, using it as a place noun is creative.

The cat isn't saying "I want to go outside", but "Mom look outside", where the lightning and noise are.

As for creating a ConLang, get into the head of the pet. It wants to eat, drink, play, sleep, cuddle, get warm, go out for a walk, go to the park or woods, have a treat, maybe listen to music, communicate sickness or pain.

It is highly likely that human language began with two word sentences, in the form of "verb noun" or "noun verb". "Feed me". "Paw hurt." "Me tired." "Me outside." "We play." "Pet me."

Animals are simple and respond to biological and basic emotional feelings. Keep your language focused on those concrete experiential elements, in two word sentences, and I think it will be believable.

Answer 4

The key is to recognize that you’re writing about a narrow form of interspecies communication. Breaking it down,

1. It is ultimately about communication. As noted also by IMSoP, the context of communication is extremely important, and is the main consideration. If you're writing about a house pet and a contemporary human like in the video, then the only contexts relevant are those within the physical limits of where the animal can go, and when the human is in the house. The "vocabulary" will only include things sufficiently common in that context. A major context to consider is the temporal setting: perhaps in the future we will have more granular ways to communicate with pets.
2. It is interspecies communication. The intellectual and physical capabilities of the pet are a major consideration. Human language is unique among forms of animal communication in many ways. Other animals do not understand human language the way we do, so any advice about constructed language generation that would normally apply to sapient species can be totally useless here. This really begs the question whether you can consider what you're creating here a constructed language or not. Another major consideration is the pet to pet-owner interface. Are they interacting merely using sounds, are physical cues used, and is there some sense of equality or equivalence in the way communication happens? Your position on all these ideas contribute to how plausible everything is.
3. It is a narrow form of interspecies communication. Again, everything falls back to context. How did this pet to pet-owner interaction even come to be? The purpose is a major consideration in the context. Concepts as broad as ideology affect the nature of this endeavor, as well. For instance, if this came about because of a contemporary posthumanist ideal that pets should be considered family in the same way humans are, then a human-like "vocabulary" is probably the starting place.

Having said this, the solution is already partially offered by yourself. You said that you will have to work backwards from dramatically ambiguous communication scenes. Given that context is what matters, the best way to make it plausible is to describe a detailed and specific instance of the communication. What is the species of the pet and how does that affect the pet to pet-owner interaction? What is the temporal setting? How about the physical setting and interface? What is unique about each character? From writing this, it will slowly become clear what is pertinent, and what can be safely hand-waved away.

To illustrate how broad the possibilities are: an idiosyncratic but fun way to start is make the pet a human and the pet-owner a super-intelligent AI, and work from there.

Answer 5

Have you considered existing conlangs (for humans) with reduced vocabulary? There's the relatively popular Toki Pona, with just 120-137 words.

It's fairly flexible and poetic, which seems to fit the bill. For example, "storm" can be translated as "kon (air, wind, breath, ghost) monsuta (fear, danger, predator)", or use "kalama (to produce sound, like singing or thunder)". Interpreting it as "storm" instead of "dangerous ghost" depends on context.

If 137 is still too many words, you can remove things unlikely to be useful to a pet: money, night sky objects, particles, etc.

Answer 6

If I recall correctly, Dean Koontz's "Watchers" featured such an experience. It involves a golden retriever that was scientifically experimented on to be intelligent. And this was in 1987 so he used Scrabble tiles. But I think eventually Koontz has him communicating virtually on the same level as a human. Maybe check that book out to see how he uses that style.