Analysis of Fictional Language based on John Carter

This linguistic fieldwork is focused on John Carter’s enigmatic Barsoom experience. The character faces a great deal of disagreement with Barsoom, Willem Dafoe and Lynn Collins. Carter comes to his senses when he learns that Barsoom’s future depends on his aggressiveness.

The driving philosophy for the vocabulary used in John Carter’s film derives straight from A Princess of Mars (Fromkin et al. 127). When John Carter speaks about Barsoomian, he says that Martian is a very basic language, and in a week, I could make all my wishes known and comprehend almost all that was said to me. Accordingly, this linguistic fieldwork assumes a simple and clear grammar for Barsoomian, which is a contrast of Na_x0092_vil.

However, it would be hard to think that what John Carter confirms so adept at Barsoomian would be challenging in putting it to human language. Indeed, anything alien cannot be understood and mastered with the rapidity signified by John Carter. Still, the language used in this case has to be the one an actor can pronounce. Subsequently, there is little in Barsoomian that is lacking some human language (Fromkin et al. 182). For instance, in maintaining such simplicity guideline, it would not be advisable to apply a case study to separate the grammatical associations in a similar manner it is done in Latin and Russian. Rather, it would be sensible to depend on the word order in the English manner. Therefore, there are six feasible orders of words based on Subject, Object, and Verb. These are SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OSV, and OVS. Human languages are characterized by the first three orders. For this analysis, VSO is the most suitable since it contains predominantly human languages (Classical, Arabic, and Celtic).

The morphology and syntax of the John Carter movie are relatively simple. The most admirable characteristic is the pronominal system, whereby subject and object cases are used separately. For instance, the akin to English I/me, he/him, and we/us. To create an objective case, the first consonant of pronunciation is taken, and then repeated when terminating the word. Therefore, I = tu, me = tut, and him = kik. Again, to create the plurals for such pronouns, the unvoiced consonants are voiced as shown in the following examples: t suits d and k suits hard g. In a similar manner, we becomes du and us becomes dud.

While watching this movie, dominantly and possibly confusing phonetics are k’s and t’s. Their use in this movie is boundless, thus creating aspirated soundless stops. Some of the statements containing the pronunciation of these phonetic characters are as follows:

[mi dutʃe] “…hell are you?”  (spoken by Tars Tarkas upon seeing Carter, following Carter’s own “What the…” utterance)

[sɑ tʃɑ tʃik] “don’t shoot him” (-Tars Tarkas)

[ʤɑteth] “don’t run” (-Tars Tarkas)

[tsɑtɑ] “it’s okɑy” (-Tars Tarkas)

[sɑkh | səlɛt˺ sɑk vəˈʤɑkh]  “Jump!  Jump like you did before.” (-Tars Tarkas)

[sɑkh] _x0093_jump_x0094_.

As a linguistic developing an alphabetic script of Barsoomian, I would integrate an approach devoid of ambiguity and indeterminacy. This is to mean that if that if you see a written script, you become certain about its pronunciation as well as how to transcribe it. Such ability demands an examination of characteristic sounds of the language using the general rule of giving every constant and vowel a distinctive symbol. Overall, John Carter movie is rich in linguistic features.

Works Cited

Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman, and Nina M. Hyams. An Introduction to Language. Boston, Mass: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2011. Print.