The Properties And Functions Of Human Language

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

In this essay the properties and functions of human language and what requirements are necessary for its attainment will be discussed. Biolinguistics will also be examined and how humans biologically perceive a language.

Language can be defined as "The method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way." (Oxford dictionary of English,1998)

Language is used in everyday life without giving it a second thought. It enables us to communicate, to express emotions and to share ideas.

It is estimated that there are over 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, 90% of these languages are used by less than 1,000 people. Languages are grouped that share a common ancestry for example Spanish, Italian, and French are known as the Romance languages which derive from Latin and English can be related to German and Dutch known as the Germanic languages. (BBC,2013)

It can be described as a joint action, which is that it requires an ensemble of people acting in coordination with each other, language embodies both individual and social processes, writers, comedians and poets must be able to use language at an individual level in order to succeed. (Clark,1996)

There are two ways to classify a language, the scene and the medium, the scene is where a language takes place-the setting. The medium is what type of language is used such as spoken or gestures. There are many different settings such as conversational language among friends and family, educational such as lecturers to students, where the lecturer is speaking on an individual basis and readings of poetry where the individual is provoking feelings in the listener.

The medium can be described as how people communicate, through spoken language, through gestures such as sign language.

Sign language is an interesting language, it is not universal as many communities were not in contact with one another, sign language varies from one country to another. Sign language has, for the deaf community been a fundamental way for communication, it has opened up doors that allows the deaf community to have their own cultural and linguistic identity. There are a new generation of deaf poets, playwrights and story tellers which sign language has enabled them to create works of art. Sign language is proof of how pliable human language is, language can be created through sound, audio and visual outlets and has taught us that language is what is needed to be human.(Perlmutter,2007)

Language is the fundamental tool to human contact but what components make up a language?

There are nine main properties that can be used to describe best how a language can be efficient-arbitrariness, duality, systematicity, structure-dependence, productivity, displacement, specialisation, universals and cultural transmission. (Williamson,2009)

I will talk about the first property I have mentioned which is arbitrariness, essentially all human languages are symbols that are in the form of words. They are random names given to objects which the people decide on. There is no way to predict a word or predict what an object would be called. Arbitrariness is quite a useful trait in a language because it allows flexibility; it can be decided among people what name to give to objects, places, people, feelings and actions. There are of course onomatopoeic words that can sound like their meaning, such "crash" and "sizzle". These words sound like the action itself and they can almost create a feeling or image in the person hearing the word. Onomatopoeic words are rare in the majority of languages. (Lucid,2008)

Another property which is part of a human language is duality. This is the idea that language has two levels of speech- primary and secondary level. Primary level- consisting of units tated that d in thcant.n the person hearing the word.they are simply just lettersive to objects/places/people etc. There areand secondary level consisting of the elements. The elements of the secondary level combine to form the units of the primary level (Williamson,2009) Elements of the verbal language are speech sounds made up of vowels and consonants which when used together with primary level units form words. Primary and secondary level sounds alone have no meaning but when they are combined the meaning is significant and conveys meaning. For example the letter "C" on its own doesn’t mean anything but when followed by "U" and "P" the word cup is spelled and we can quickly understand what is meant by the word.

As language is arbitrary in ways that random words are chosen as symbols for objects, language does have patterns. Sytematicity is the third property of a language, if language was completely random it would be very difficult and confusing to understand. Regularity and order are essential for a language to function to its full affect (Williamson,2009) Language has many rules that define which combinations will work and which combinations won’t, there are rules that govern the combination of primary level units for example "The grass is green" is acceptable whereas "The grass green is" does not make sense.

Humans intuitively recognize patterns in a language, if given a sentence that is arranged in the incorrect form it is very easy for humans to rearrange it to the correct form, this property is called structure dependence.

Noam Chomsky has raised the nature/nurture issue regarding whether language is innate or learned from a blank slate. Chomsky believes that every child has a ‘language acquisition device’ which encrypts properties of a language and grammatical structures in a child’s brain. Language is a part of human problem solving skills and that the brain is differentiated into systems of design and structure one of which is language. (Russ Schuh,2007). This can explain why humans can predict patterns in a language and what will come next. It can explain how we can spot an error in the arrangement of sentences from a very young age. This theory suggests that language comes naturally to human beings and it is not only imitated "Language is encoded in DNA, which is why we are good at it, like being "good" at having two arms. (Lasnik,Fodor)

Productivity is another key property of human language, it is the notion that the animal kingdom are prone to act in a certain way regarding a particular stimulus, if a stimulus is known then the behaviour can be predicted. Language is not stimulus bound, there is no way to predict what each human will say or think when seeing a particular image or how they will react or feel when reading a story, everyone has their own thoughts and feelings and this is another reason why language is very flexible, it allows for everybody to have their own ideas, there is no set thought process, this idea leads on to productivity, that each person can create new and meaningful utterances that may not have been heard before but can be interpreted effectively by other humans.

A very important property in human language is displacement, this is the idea that language allows us to discuss things in the past or future, events that have not yet happened, it allows us to talk about objects that aren’t present and it allows us to conjure up an image of something or someone using descriptive words, this is a very beneficial property of language, it allows us to create fictional stories and talk about things that may not even exist, it allows us to exercise the imagination.

Specialisation allows humans to use words to describe a physical action without actually having to do the action, for example if we want someone to leave the room "Get out!" can be shouted without actually having to physically remove the person from the room.

Each language has universal traits such as nouns and verbs. A linguist named Joseph Greenberg studied and compared 30 languages from around the world and noted that there are rules in which the way languages are governed. Greenberg states that language universals are of an important value in the study of language. They allow us to state what is possible in human language and what isn’t, they help us to comprehend the principles that govern interpersonal skills in all cultures and what in the brain allows us to communicate in everyday life through language.(Demet Yilmaz,N.D)

Cultural transmission is the last property of a human language which is very important for the future generations of the human race, it allows people to pass on information and experiences to the future generation of what was learned, it allows people to communicate social norms and acceptable behaviour to the next generation without having to start from the beginning. The language of a particular society forms part of the culture of that society (Williamson,2009)

Biolinguistics is a very important way to describe how we perceive a language, biolinguistics takes into account all aspects of a language such as sound, structure and meaning (Chomsky,2006) Language may be one of the key ingredients to the intellectual capacity of human beings it is argued. The intellectual capacity that human beings have is what sets us apart from animals. It is assumed that whatever the human intellectual capacity is language is essential to it (Chomsky,2006) As Jared Diamond called it "the great leap forward" and believes that there was a genetic event that rewired the brain and enabled humans to use language and to express vast amounts of emotions and ideas. There is evidence that evolution plays a big part in language, the bones in the middles of the ear are excellent for sound-amplifying and for interpreting speech but these bones appear to have moved from the reptilian as a mechanical effect of growth of the neocortex in mammals that began 160 million years ago(Chomsky,2006) This suggests that the evolution of language is very brief even though it is very recent.

It is argued that originally language was not created solely for communication, that language as a communication tool came secondarily(Nobel Laureate Francois Jacob,1974) Jacob believed that language was created as "a role of symbolizing, in evoking cognitive images" and therefore "mental creation of possible worlds."

The idea that humans could communicate long before language was created is possible using gestures and sounds but when trying to articulate ideas and possibilities of future ambitions, language is a fundamental tool in achieving these goals.