system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Star Trek] The Tamarians can only speak in metaphor, how did they develop warp drive?

A key element of working as a team (which presumably researching, developing and building a warp drive would require - along with all the preceding developments that enable it) is effective communication. Speaking only in metaphor, how did the Tamarians manage to build effective teams?

Further, since their metaphoric language depends largely on historical reference, how do we get from the "first" reference to the second and so on, in order to construct a language capable of expressing enough information to build anything? Where did the words come from in the first place?

A society which can only look back must surely not be able to move forward.
gpt
1) Math is seperate in their language.  While they do not have direct words for numbers and operations, there is a system that is musical in nature (whistles and such) that can be used for math complex enough to develop Warp drive.  
2) Children are taught language in school similar to Federation children, except teaching tends to consist of "plays" that bestow the meaning of more complicated phrases.  
3) Their brains are fundamentally different from human brains and tuned to both understand and more importantly remember a vast number of such "metaphors".  
4) Many people who learned English (or another language that uses Latin or similar letters) wonder how children of Asian cultures can remember such a vast array of characters to write with.  The difference between Tamaranian language and other Humanoid species is similar.