Age of Cataclysm: I can light up the technology tree

"Phonemes?" Mao Zhengzhi frowned slightly and muttered to himself.

Seeing the doubtful look on Mao Zhengzhi's face, Meng Lu quickly explained.

"Phonemes are the smallest units of speech divided according to the natural properties of speech."

"Like vowels and consonants, for example, the Chinese language we currently use has 32 phonemes in total."

"All our usual communications are completed based on these 32 phonemes."

"As for the communication between these giant fish, I have discovered 52 phonemes so far. Although there may be other phonemes that have not yet been discovered, with these 52 phonemes, I should be able to make a simple analysis of their language system. "

Lu Yongchang and Mao Zhengzhi nodded repeatedly.

As expected of a professional.

Lu Yongchang once again turned his attention to the holographic image aside and carefully observed all the processed voice clips.

"Huh?"

His eyes moved slightly, as if he had discovered something.

Under the gazes of Meng Lu and Mao Zhengzhi, Lu Yongchang took a step forward and stretched out his hand to mark an area in the holographic projection.

"Professor?" Meng Lu looked at Lu Yongchang's movements with some surprise, and was a little confused for a moment.

Lu Yongchang did not speak, but was busy processing the demarcated voice fragment.

With the help of Zero, Lu Yongchang easily removed various frequency fluctuations containing information.

Then, a spectrum chart that was relatively stable but still fluctuated slightly randomly appeared in front of everyone.

"This is..." Mao Zhengzhi suddenly realized that as a biologist, he had already noticed the significance of Lu Yongchang's actions. "No wonder we couldn't find any similarities at that time!"

"So this is where the problem lies!"

But Meng Lu on the side still looked confused.

Her main research direction is language, and she doesn't understand Lu Yongchang's purpose of doing this.

"This is the ultrasonic frequency used by giant fish to explore their surroundings. You can simply understand it as the noise floor in their speech."

Lu Yongchang didn't look back and explained directly.

"In the deep sea, they can only rely on ultrasonic waves to sense the surrounding environment, but this also presents a problem."

"How should they communicate when sensing their environment?"

"You can't risk being blind to communicate with your companions, right?"

"So they evolved this unique language system."

Meng Lu suddenly understood and took over Lu Yongchang's words: "On top of the basic ultrasonic waves that play a sensing role, superimpose ultrasonic waves of other frequencies to transmit information through frequency fluctuations!"

"Unfortunately, humans cannot hear these ultrasound waves."

"Otherwise, they might create a beautiful music that goes on and on as they communicate."

Lu Yongchang nodded noncommittally.

As Meng Lu said, this possibility does exist.

If these ultrasonic waves are replaced by audio that can be heard by the human ear, then when these giant fish are talking, you will hear bursts of pure music that rises and falls, without any lyrics.

Of course, whether the music sounds good or not depends on personal luck.

Some words sound like celestial music, while others sound like the harsh noise of scratched glass.

But no matter what, as long as you say enough words, they can eventually produce a beautiful song.

Just like letting many monkeys hit the typewriter keys at will, they may eventually write an epic masterpiece.

Lu Yongchang retracted his somewhat divergent thoughts and turned his attention to the holographic image again.

He didn't know why, but he always felt a little strange when observing the "sentences" composed of phonemes.

He frowned slightly and stared at the holographic projection.

After pondering for a moment, he spoke again: "There seems to be something wrong with the phoneme arrangement of these giant fish..."

Meng Lu perked up and nodded immediately: "Professor, have you also discovered this phenomenon?"

"There seems to be no so-called grammar in their language system."

As she spoke, she opened another holographic image with doubts on her face: "Professor, look, this is the sound made by the giant fish leader when he urged his companions."

"According to statistics, a total of 43 voice clips were generated during this period, and the duration of each voice clip was approximately 2.1-2.3 seconds."

"It stands to reason that these voice clips should be telling the same thing."

Lu Yongchang nodded slightly.

As it should be.

"A problem arises." Meng Lu reached out and slid her hand on the holographic projection again. "These 43 voice fragments have the same phonemes."

"These phonemes form some short or long syllables, and like phonemes, these syllables also exist in 43 speech segments at the same time."

"but!"

"The order of these syllables is not consistent. They seem to be arranged randomly." Meng Lu shrugged and said helplessly, "At least Zero didn't find any pattern."

"This strange phenomenon occurs in many speech clips."

"So I suspect there is no grammar at all in their language."

Lu Yongchang suddenly frowned: "Then how do they understand what their companions said?"

“Without a fixed grammar, unnecessary misunderstandings are bound to occur.”

"This is undoubtedly fatal for a species."

Meng Lu hesitated for a moment, then slowly said: "This may have something to do with the way they talk."

"Through data processing, I found that many of these more than 100,000 voice clips are repeated."

"When they speak, they may repeat their words constantly."

"Different syllables are arranged and combined with each other until the other party completely understands them."

"...Repeater?" Lv Yongchang's mouth twitched, and he complained subconsciously.

Meng Lu looked at Lv Yongchang blankly, and this sentence broke her inherent impression of Lv Yongchang.

She nodded with difficulty: "To some extent, it is indeed a bit like a repeater."

Although it sounds a bit incredible, in Lv Yongchang's view, this is not an incomprehensible phenomenon.

After all, there have been studies that show that the order of Chinese characters does not necessarily affect reading. For example, when you finish reading this sentence, you find that all the characters in it are messed up.

Maybe the brains of these giant fish have similar functions?

However, for humans, this is not good news.

Although it is not clear how these giant fish understand this irregular language, it undoubtedly adds a lot of difficulties to the subsequent deciphering work of the Academy of Sciences.

"Let's summarize and organize it first."

Lv Yongchang pondered for a moment and said slowly: "At least, find out all the same syllables first, and then analyze the meaning of their expression based on the video."

Meng Lu nodded helplessly.

"I'm afraid this is the only way."

Although there is Zero's help, the workload of this "stupid method" is still extremely huge.

At least, in the next week, Meng Lu will probably have to work overtime in the laboratory.