Aspects of human language
The following properties of human language have been argued to distinguish it from animal
communication:
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Arbitrariness: There is no rational relationship between a sound or sign and its
meaning. (There is nothing intrinsically "housy" about the word "house". i.e.
symbolism)
Cultural transmission: Language is passed from one language user to the next,
consciously or unconsciously.
Discreteness: Language is composed of discrete units that are used in combination to
create meaning.
Displacement: Languages can be used to communicate ideas about things that are not
in the immediate vicinity either spatially or temporally, or both.
Duality: Language works on two levels at once, a surface level and a semantic
(meaningful) level.
Metalinguistics: Ability to discuss language itself.
Productivity: A finite number of units can be used to create an indefinitely large
number of utterances.
NOTE:
dis·crete adj. 1. Constituting a separate thing; distinct. 2. Consisting of unconnected distinct parts.
DISCRETNESS
discreteness (n.) A suggested defining property of human language (contrasting with the properties of
other semiotic systems), whereby the elements of a discreteness 149 signal can be analysed as having
definable boundaries, with no gradation or continuity between them. A system lacking discreteness is
said to be ‘continuous’ or non-discrete (see non-discrete grammar). The term is especially used in
phonetics and phonology to refer to sounds which have relatively clear-cut boundaries, as defined in
acoustic, articulatory or auditory terms. It is evident that speech is a continuous stream of sound, but
speakers of a language are able to segment this continuum into a finite number of discrete units, these
usually corresponding to the phonemes of the language. The boundaries of these units may correspond to
identifiable acoustic or articulatory features, but often they do not.
(2008) Cristal, David. A dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 6th edition. Blackwell Publishing
DISPLACEMENT
displacement (n.) A suggested defining property of human language (contrasting with the properties of
many other semiotic systems), whereby language can be used to refer to contexts removed from the
immediate situation of the speaker (i.e. it can be displaced). For example, if someone says I was afraid,
it is not necessary that the speaker still is afraid, whereas animal calls seem generally tied to specific
situations, such as danger or hunger, and have nothing comparable to displaced speech (unless this is
artificially taught to them, as some experiments with chimpanzees have tried to do).
DUALITY
duality A property of human language (contrasting with the properties of other semiotic systems), which
sees languages as being structurally organized in terms of two abstract levels; also called duality of
patterning or duality of structure. At the first, higher level, language is analysed in terms of
combinations of (meaningful) units (such as morphemes, words); at another, lower level, it is seen as a
sequence of segments which lack any meaning in themselves, but which combine to form units of
meaning. These two levels are sometimes referred to as articulations – a ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’
articulation respectively.
ARBITRARINESS
“Arbitrary” here means something “inexplicable in terms of some more general principal”. The most
obvious instance of arbitrariness in language has to do with the link between form and meaning,
between the signal and the message.
There are some exceptional instances in all languages of what is traditionally referred to as
“onomatopoeia”, in such cases we may say that there is a non-arbitrary connection between the form
and the meaning of such words. However, the vast majority of the words in all languages are nononomatopoeic: the connection between their form and their meaning is arbitrary in that, given the form, it
is impossible to predict the meaning, and, given the meaning, it is impossible to predict the form.
It is obvious that arbitrariness, in this sense, increases the flexibility and versatility of a communication
system in that the extension of the vocabulary is not constrained by the necessity of matching form and
meaning.
Arbitrariness has both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, the association of a particular
form with a particular meaning must be learned for each vocabulary-unit independently, as a result, a
considerable burden is placed upon memory in the language-acquisition process. On the other hand, it
makes the systems more flexible and adaptable, but it makes it more difficult to learn.
Constrained: confined, limited
METALINGUISTICS
metalanguage (n.) linguistics, as other sciences, uses this term in the sense of a higher-level language for
describing an object of study (or ‘object language’) – in this case the object of study is itself language,
the various language samples, intuitions, etc., which constitute our linguistic experience.
PRODUCTIVITY
The productivity of a language-system is the property which makes possible the construction and
interpretation of new signals: i.e. of signals that have not been previously encountered and are not to be
found on some list – however large that list might be – of prefabricated signals, to which the user has
access. All language-systems enable their users to construct and understand indefinitely many utterances
that they have never heard or read before. The fact that children, at a quite early age, are able to produce
utterances that they have never heard before is proof that language is not learned solely by means of
imitation and memorization.
“...within the limits set by the rules of grammar, which are perhaps partly universal and partly specific
to particular languages, native speakers of a language are free to act creatively to construct indefinitely
many utterance.” (Chomsky)
productivity (n.) A general term used in linguistics to refer to the creative capacity of language users to
produce and understand an indefinitely large number of sentences. It contrasts particularly with the
unproductive communication systems of animals, and in this context is seen by some linguists as one of
the design features of human language. The term is also used in a more restricted sense with reference to
the use made by a language of a specific feature productivity or pattern. A pattern is productive if it is
repeatedly used in language to produce further instances of the same type (e.g. the past-tense affix -ed in
English is productive, in that any new verb will be automatically assigned this past-tense form). Nonproductive (or unproductive) patterns lack any such potential; e.g. the change from mouse to mice is
not a productive plural formation – new nouns would not adopt it, but would use instead the productive sending pattern. Semi-productive forms are those where there is a limited or occasional creativity, as
when a prefix such as un- is sometimes, but not universally, applied to words to form their opposites, e.g.
happy unhappy, but not sad *unsad.
CULTURAL TRANSMISSION
cultural transmission A suggested defining property of human language (contrasting with the properties
of many other semiotic systems), whereby the ability to speak a language is transmitted from generation
to generation by a process of learning, and not genetically. This is not to deny that children may be born
with certain innate predispositions towards language, but it is to emphasize the difference between
human language, where environmental learning has such a large role to play, and animal systems of
communication, where instinct is more important.