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How could scents develop into a full language?

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Human (spoken) languages have a great variety in terms of grammar and what the basic elements are, but they have essential features in common in terms of being a time sequence of phonetic primitives, which are sounds involving both AM and FM modulation of basic sounds that the vocal apparatus can make.

If an animal that communicates via scents were to develop intelligence and a "full language" evolved from the system originally used to communicate a few basic ideas only, how might that work?

How could smells be built up into complex patterns? In what ways would it be different from the implicit assumptions we have concerning language, since we use sound?

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This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/65210. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

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