Halp?
Dear comic book nerds, linguists, and comic book nerd linguists,
I am formulating a linguistic study. In order to do this, I need to define what, in the context of a comic book environment, an alien is. Here are the rules I have formulated:
1. Must not have been born on Earth or to two Earthling parents. Duh.
2. Must not be a native speaker of any Earth language. This is the Superman rule; for linguistic purposes, Clark Kent is from Kansas.
3. Must be from the present. Time travel throws everything off.
4. Must be human or humanoid. This is mainly to exclude The Spectre, The Phantom Stranger, etc. as well as all the Brainiacs. It also has to do with articulators.
5. Must be mortal. Immortals would throw things off just as bad as time travellers, and for the same reason.
6. Must not be under the influence of another being, force, or item. This is to exclude beings who are being puppeted by people with potentially different speech patterns.
Under this, we could exclude: Superman, Supergirl, Superboy, Brainiac, everybody from LoSH, all the Doctors Fate, Wonder Woman, Eclipso, Parallax, The Spectre
We could include: Hawkgirl (JLU), J'onn J'onnz, Starfire et al, everybody else from Krypton, most of the Green Lantern Corps, Lobo, Mongul, Sinestro
Questionable: the New Gods, Hawkman/girl/woman (comics)
I need some sort of provision for excluding Elseworlds characters, but I'm not quite sure how to phrase it without excluding the DCAU. What I might do is exclude everything but the DCAU, because that's where the best data's gonna come from. I think these rules will still hold for Marvel, but I just don't know the aliens of the Marvelverse well enough to do it.
Thoughts, flist?
I am formulating a linguistic study. In order to do this, I need to define what, in the context of a comic book environment, an alien is. Here are the rules I have formulated:
1. Must not have been born on Earth or to two Earthling parents. Duh.
2. Must not be a native speaker of any Earth language. This is the Superman rule; for linguistic purposes, Clark Kent is from Kansas.
3. Must be from the present. Time travel throws everything off.
4. Must be human or humanoid. This is mainly to exclude The Spectre, The Phantom Stranger, etc. as well as all the Brainiacs. It also has to do with articulators.
5. Must be mortal. Immortals would throw things off just as bad as time travellers, and for the same reason.
6. Must not be under the influence of another being, force, or item. This is to exclude beings who are being puppeted by people with potentially different speech patterns.
Under this, we could exclude: Superman, Supergirl, Superboy, Brainiac, everybody from LoSH, all the Doctors Fate, Wonder Woman, Eclipso, Parallax, The Spectre
We could include: Hawkgirl (JLU), J'onn J'onnz, Starfire et al, everybody else from Krypton, most of the Green Lantern Corps, Lobo, Mongul, Sinestro
Questionable: the New Gods, Hawkman/girl/woman (comics)
I need some sort of provision for excluding Elseworlds characters, but I'm not quite sure how to phrase it without excluding the DCAU. What I might do is exclude everything but the DCAU, because that's where the best data's gonna come from. I think these rules will still hold for Marvel, but I just don't know the aliens of the Marvelverse well enough to do it.
Thoughts, flist?