Re: (Tears) Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

Correction to "The Code" excerpt.

James Nicoll wrote:

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Captain Nemo, volume 1) by
Jules Verne
>
Professor Pierre Aronnax sets out to classify what he hopes is a
novel species of narwhal, only to find himself on board a
submarine captained by a self-exiled genius.
>
https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/like-the-ocean

    Excerpt:

    The crew of the Nautilus, all male, are left in the
    background because they speak a conlang not shared
    with Aronnax, Conseil, and Land.

Matthew Ward's short story, "The Code" conceivably contains courtship
conlang concocted by committee:

    The committee got the first version of the Code wrong.
    Their cleverness hindered achieving their goal. They
    created natural sounding language for the oral contracts
    in an attempt to be as unobtrusive as possible. Sadly,
    people agreed to things without realizing it and denied
    agreements they didn’t wish to deny. Take, for instance,
    the original initiation for kissing, "How do your lips
    feel?" To agree, you replied, "Ready to be kissed." The
    law considered everything else to be refusing the contract.

    In Saussure v Gettier, Eric Gettier was on a date and
    asked, "How do your lips feel?"

    Carla Saussure seemed to forget that this initiated a
    contract. She replied, "They are rather dry. Good thing
    I brought my lip balm with me. What about you? Do you
    want some?"

    Saussure’s response put Gettier in a bind, because
    prompting the correct response invalidated the contract
    as attempted coercion. Gettier tried again, "No. I’m not
    actually asking how your lips are."

    Saussure continued to seem ignorant of the Gettier problem.

    "Well, then why did you ask me?"

    "Because I want to kiss you, of course!"

    "Oh. That’s silly. Of course you can."

    Gettier lost himself in the moment and forgot that he had
    not fulfilled the proper wording. He leaned over and kissed
    her. She sued for sexual harassment and won.

Danke,

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