Introducing ParaMorse

Introducing ParaMorse, a human super language, and releasing paramorse, an open source python package to learn and explore this variant.

• For a quick overview, see the introduction below with an example and video demonstration.
• For the software implementation, go to the paramorse package repository on GitHub which also has a more in-depth specification of the ParaMorse variant.
• For a fuller treatment of the framework itself, see the super language paper.

The ParaMorse variant and its supporting software package paramorse were created with a particular goal: to establish a proof-of-concept (PoC) for the human acquisition of super language.

We (Sitovin Labs) are looking to find and develop proficient speakers.
Learn more below.

Introduction

ParaMorse, short for paralinguistic Morse code, is a super language of oral English.

In ParaMorse, the dots and dashes of Morse are encoded by the two paralinguistic filler sounds uh and um, respectively.
A third filler word, okay, separates the letters in the Morse code sequence.
To communicate in ParaMorse, a speaker can use these simple rules to embed a Morse code message in the paralanguage of their speech.

For instance, suppose in a fictional example Alice wants to communicate the message "ten" to Bob.
Per the Morse code ITU standard alphabet, translation will be:

Message : TEN Morse code : - . -.

The sequence of Morse code marks (dash … dot … dash dot) can be delivered in radio tone form.

Here instead we set the following mapping for the ParaMorse super language transformation:

um → dot . uh → dash - okay → end of symbol

As a result, the paralanguage sequence that encodes "ten" will be:

uh … okay … um … okay … uh … um … okay

Below is a video of this example.

Note that choosing oral English as the base and the particular map from paralanguage to Morse code is done without a loss of generality (e.g. a French base would likely take euh as a Morse code mark).

This basic construction within this variant can be extended. For example, you can introduce one more paralanguage token (e.g. eh) to mark the end of words (rather than letters) in a Morse message.

The construction of ParaMorse here may also inspire slightly different variants. For instance, the separation of letters and words could be done through different linguistic structures or perhaps using a more temporal dimension.
In another example variant, the end of a Morse letter may instead be designated by a minimum number of sentences in which the speaker uses no paralanguage filler at all. For the purpose of human production and interpretation, filler sound separators are more operable.

Software package

We developed paramorse, which is an open source software implementation of the base-to-variant transformation (and its inverse) in the ParaMorse super language.

Find it on GitHub:
https://github.com/petertoshev/paramorse
and at the corresponding Python Package Index (PyPI) page: https://pypi.org/project/paramorse/

We invite collaborators to build on top of this work, especially to support ParaMorse learning and evaluation.

Seeking proficient speakers

We are actively looking for proficient speakers of ParaMorse.
If you can understand or produce ParaMorse speech without device assistance, you are encouraged to connect by emailing contact@sitovin.com.

We also greatly appreciate the redistribution of this solicitation to any individuals or groups who may interested.

Human acquisition PoC

ParaMorse uses an oral human language for its base.
Its modifications are naturalistic as well. Their form (the paralanguage) is a small set of already common disfluencies in speech. Their interpretation (the Morse) is a long-standing coded communication scheme which was designed to make our exchange of messages at great distance more naturalistic.
Taken together, we believe the features of ParaMorse make it a good candidate for relatively quick human adoption.
Indeed the objective of the PoC it to establish proficiency in a set of ParaMorse speakers.

We will continue to develop tools and methods to support the learning of ParaMorse and to measure individual ability in a few dimensions (e.g. listening comprehension, speaking).
We plan to run some competitive events to that end. Timeline and formats are yet to be determined. Roughly speaking, they may combine elements from linguistics olympiads, high-speed telegraphy championships, and simple online software games.
We invite collaborators who can contribute to this effort.

Join the Super Language blog mailing list for competition announcements and other updates.