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The Guild was founded on Earth at the end of the 21st
century after first contact with a race from somewhere in the Galaxy. Two men
most involved in this first contact, a theoretical linguist and an ex-Jesuit,
NSA agent devised the first curriculum for a new specialty, xenolinguistics at a
small but elite school in Switzerland. Soon they recruited a select group of
neurolinguists, ethnographers and AI specialists and began training
xenolinguists.
At
the end of the 22nd century war broke out with the Venatixi, an
advanced race whose motives were seldom if ever understood by humans;
the hostilities came to an abrupt, unexplained end, apparently when
it suited the Venatixi. The best, most advanced technology in the Arm
was made by the Venatixi; lingsters often ran into sentient Venatixi
AIs when they were on assignment.
In
the beginning, lingsters travelled to assignments at sublight speeds,
accepting the fact that they'd never see home and family again. Two
centuries after the founding of the Guild, the Venatixi gave jumpship
technology to Earth in exchange for information they believe will lead
them to solve their ancient search for a disappeared, super-race, the
Sagittans.
II.
The
Mother House where the Guild trains lingsters (the familiar form
of “xenolinguist”) is on the southern shore of Lake Geneva,
formerly part of Switzerland, and several kilometres north-east of
the city of Geneva. Children apprentice to the Guild around the age
of seven or eight. It's difficult becoming a lingster; not all those
who start gain a commission. The Guild discourages its lingsters from
marrying – their mission comes before everything else – but
not surprisingly, some do. The House complex includes the dolphin pools
where the students swim with tursiop tutors and learn a different world
view influenced by a different physiology. From time to time after
graduation – once jumpship technology is in place – lingsters
can come back for refresher training.
The
Head of the Mother House is addressed as "Magister" or "Magistra." The
hierarchy of the Guild is deliberately monastic and classical, and
all the terms come from that era, especially. Latin. Senior faculty
who administer final exams and oversee certification of graduates,
are called “Preceptors,” and wear a ceremonial cobalt blue
robe. Regular teachers are addressed as "Dom" and wear green
robes. There is technically no "Head" of the Guild which
is ultimately controlled by the Chapter of Governors. Some of these
governors have other duties --liason, diplomacy, etc, which most lingsters
in the field are not concerned about. Scholars and researchers are
given the title "Eruditus" and study matters to do with the
history and development of language across the Arm.They don't teach,
but there's usually one somewhere on the Mother House grounds.
Lingsters have a microchip implanted while they're at the Mother House.
This allows high-speed memory functions while in the field, and also
allows them to link to a computer to set up the language program for
later use by non-lingsters. Once the interface is complete, an access
program allows a non-lingster to use it. Lingsters send a copy of any
program they set up back to the Mother House. They're not expected
to be fluent in every language.
The development of the language chip allowed dolphins to be used
as tutors early on.The dolphin tutors have a kind of amused tolerance
for the workings of the Guild; they frequently rotate with their kind
in the oceans, but they are extremely loyal to the Guild and it's not
uncommon to find great-great-grandchildren of former tutors working
in Geneva.
The field pack of psychoactive drugs came fairly early, too, as
lingsters
realized there were some worldviews they'd never interface with otherwise.
This happened by chance -- a lingster who ate hallucinogenic substances
on another world and found that it helped communication rather than
hindering. There are two sequences of drugs -- one (the alpha sequence),
neurotransmitters for speeding up processing of language, and the other
(beta sequence), state-alterers, for changing worldview. These are
carried in a lingster's field-pack. (Later on, subcutaneous pumps came
to be used, but many lingsters preferred the control offered them by
the packs.)
III.
The Guild's work is founded on the premise that there is a difference
between what is chosen to be recognized (linguistic relativity as explored
by the proto-xenolinguists Sapir and Whorf) and how it is represented
(Universal Grammar, as described by proto-xenolinguist Chomsky). On
Earth, the Guild explains, the matrix is homogenous, therefore human
languages do share a similar world-view, and linguistic relativity
is a very minor factor; thus many early linguists overlooked or denied
its existence. But out in the Orion Arm where planetary environments
and the experience of native species vary so much, it plays a greater
role. Conversely, the idea of a universal form of grammar has been
found to hold true of alien languages -- though of course the elements
vary.The underlying metaphors of a language are extremely important
to understanding worldview.
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