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Everybody knows the answer to this guest ion but nobody has so
far been able to come out with any standard definition that fully
explains the term language. The term language can be
understood better in terms of its properties or characteristics.
Some linguists have been trying to define language in their own
ways even though all these definitions far from satisfactory.
Here are some these definitions:
1Language is a symbol system based on pure or arbitrary
conventions.( Robens1985)
2. Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of
communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a
system on voluntarily produced symbols.(Sapir1921).
3. Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for
human communication.
1.Language is a means of communication.
2. Language is arbitrary.
3. Language is a system of systems.
4.Language is primarily vocal.
5. Language differs from animal
communication in several ways.
6. Language is a form of social behavior.
7.Language is symbol system.
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The word was
first used in the middle of the 19th century to emphasize the
difference between a newer approach to the study of
language that was then developing and the more traditional
approach of philology. The philologist is concerned
primarily with historical development of language as it is
manifest in written texts and in the context of the associated
literate and culture.
The linguist though may be interested in written texts
and in the development of languages through time, tends to
give priority to spoken languages and to the problems of
analyzing them as they operate at a given point in time,
without relevance to their history. “Linguistics is the
scientific study of language”. The word language here des
not refer to any particular language but can be any language
in general.
We don’t usually think of speaking as similar to chewing,
licking and sucking, but, like speaking, all of these actions
involve movement of the mouth, tongue and lips in some kind
controlled way. It is an example of the type of observation that
can lead to interesting speculations about the origins of
spoken language.
We simply don’t know how language originated. We suspect
that some types of spoken languages developed between
100,000 and 50,000 years ago, well before written language
about 5,000 years ago.
In the biblical tradition, God created Adam “whatsoever Adam
called every living creature, that was the name thereof”.
Alternatively, a Hindu tradition, language came from Sarasvati,
wife of Brahma, creator of the universe. In most religions, there
appears to be divine source who provides humans with
language. In an attempt to rediscover this original divine
language, a few experiments have been carried out, but with
rather conflicting results. The basic hypothesis seems to have
been that, if human infants were allowed to grow up without
hearing any language around them, they would spontaneously
begin using the original God-given language.
A quite different view of the beginning of language is based
on the concept of natural sounds. The suggestion is that
primitive words could have been imitations of natural
sounds which early men and women heard around them.
When an object flew by, making a CAW-CAW sound, the
early human tried to imitate the sound and use it to refer to
the thing associated with the sound. And when another
flying creature made a coo-coo sound, that natural sound
was adopted to refer to that kind of object. All modern
languages have some words with pronunciations that seem
to echo naturally occurring sounds could be used to support
this theory. In English, in addition to cukoo, we have splash,
bang, boom, rattle buzz, hiss, and forms such as bow-bow.
This type of view has been called the “bow-bow” theory of
language origin. While it is true that a number of words in
any languages onomatopoeic (echoing natural sound).
One other natural sound proposal has known as the yohe-ho theory. The idea is that the sounds of a person
involved in physical effort could be the source of our
language, especially when that physical effort involved
several people and had to be coordinated.
Apes and other primates have grunts and social calls, but
they do not seem to have developed the capacity for
speech.
Instead of looking at types of sounds as the source of human
speech, we can look at the types of physical features humans
possess, especially those that are distinct from other
creatures, which may have been able to support speech
production. In the study of evolutionary development, there
are certain physical features, best thought of as partial
adaptations, which appear to be relevant for speech.
What are the human physical features that enable them to
use languages?
Teeth, lips, mouth, larynx, and pharynx:
Human teeth are upright, not slanting outwards like those of
apes, and they are roughly even in height. Such characteristics are
not very useful for ripping or tearing food and seem better
adapted for grinding and chewing. They also very helpful in
making sounds as f or v. Human lips are more flexibility
certainly helps in making sounds like p or b. The human mouth
is relatively small compared to other primates, can be opened and
closed rapidly, and contains a smaller, thicker and more muscular
tongue which can be used to shape a wide variety of sounds
inside the oral cavity. The human larynx “voice box” differs
significantly in position from the larynx of other primates such
as monkeys.
The human brain:
In control of organizing all these more complex physical
parts potentially available for sound production is the
human brain, which is usually large relative to human body
size. The human brain is lateralized, that is, it has
specialized functions in each of the two hemispheres. Those
functions that control motor movements involved in things
like speaking and object manipulation are largely confined
to the left hemisphere of the brain for most humans.
Facts about Languages:
1.Every language is good enough for its people.
2.Every language has consonants and vowels.
3.Every language has rule in any shape.
4.Every language has linguistics and non linguistics elements.
5. Every language belongs to a certain family.
6. Every language is subject to development.
7. Every language is uttered through organs of speech.
8. Language only exists in a community.
9. Every individual is capable of acquiring or learning a language.
10. Every language is loaded with its cultural aspects one cannot
strip one of the other.
Special properties of human language:
1.Communicative and informative signals.
2. Displacement.
3. Arbitrariness.
4. Cultural transmission.
5. Productivity.
6. Duality.
Animals and Human Language
There are a lot of stories about creatures that can talk. We
usually assume that they are fantasy or fiction or that they
involve birds or animals simply imitating something they
have heard humans say. We know that creatures are capable
of communicating, certainly with other members of their
own species. Is it possible that a creature could learn to
communicate with humans using language? Or does human
language have properties that make it so unique that it is
quite unlike any other communication system and unlearn
able by any other creature? To answer these questions, we will
first consider some special properties of human language.
Communicative and informative signals:
We should first distinguish between specifically
communicative signals and those which may be
unintentionally informative signals. Someone listening to
you may become informed about you through a number of
signals that you have not intentionally sent. He may note
that you have a cold (you sneezed). However, when you use
language to tell this person, I’d like to apply for the vacant
position of senior brain surgeon at the hospital, you are
normally considered to be intentionally communicating
something. Similarly, the blackbird is not normally taken to
be communicating anything by having black feathers, sitting
on branch and looking down at the ground, but is considered
to be sending a communicative signals with the loud
squawking produced when a cat appears on scene.
Displacement:
When your cat comes home and stands at your feet calling meow,
you are likely to understand this message as relating to that
immediate time and place. If you ask your cat where it has been
and what it was up to, you will get the same meow response.
Animal communication seems to be designed exclusively for this
moment, here and now. It cannot be used to relate events that are
far removed in time and place. When your dog says GRRR, it
means GRRR, right now, because dogs don’t seem to be capable of
communicating GRR, last night, over in the park. In contrast,
human language users are normally capable of producing
messages equivalent to GRRR, last night, over in the park, and
then going on to say in fact, I’ll be going back tomorrow for some
more. Humans can refer to past and future time. This property of
human language is called displacement. It allows language users
to talk about things and events not present in the immediate
environment.
It has been proposed that bee communication may have the
property of displacement. For example, when a worker bee
finds a source of nectar and returns to the beehive, it can
perform a complex dance routine to communicate to the
other bees the location of this nectar. Depending on the type
of dance ( round dance for nearby and tail wagging dance,
for further away and how far). Bee communication has
displace in an extremely limited form.
Arbitrariness:
It is generally the case that there is no ‘natural’ connection
between a linguistic form and its meaning. The connection is
quite arbitrary. The relationship between linguistic signs and
objects in the world is described as arbitrariness.
For the majority of animal signals, there does appear to be
clear connection between the conveyed message and the
signal used t convey it. This impression we have of the nonarbitrariness of animal signal may be closely connected to
the fact that, for any animal, the set of signals used in
communication is finite. That is, each variety of animal
communication consists of a fixed and limited set of vocal or
gestural forms. Many of these forms are only used in specific
situation (e,g, establishing territory) and at particular times.
Cultural Transmission:
While we may inherit physical features such as brown eyes
and dark hair from our parents, but we don not inherit
language. We acquire a language in a culture with other
speakers and not from parental genes. An infant born to
Korean parents in Korea, but adopted and brought up from
birth by English speakers in the United States, will have
physical characteristics inherited from his or her natural
parents, but will inevitably speak English.
This process whereby a language is passed on from one
generation to the next is described as cultural transmission.
It is clear that humans are born with some kind of
predisposition to acquire language in a general sense.
Chimpanzees and Language:
The idea of raising a chimp and a child together may seem like a
nightmare, but this is basically what was done in an early attempt
to teach a chimpanzee to use human language. In the 1930s, two
scientists (Luella and Winthrop) reported on their experience of
raising an infant chimpanzee together with their baby son. The
chimpanzee, called Gua, was reported t be able to understand
about a hundred words, but did not say any of them. In the 1940,
a chimpanzee named Viki was reared by another scientist couple
(Catherine and Kieth) in their own home, exactly as if she was a
human child. These parents spend five years attempting to get
Viki to say English words by trying to shape her mouth as she
produced sounds. Viki eventually managed to produce some
words, rather poorly articulated versions of mama, papa and cup.
This was a remarkable achievement since it has become clear that
non-human primates do not actually have a physically structured
vocal tract which is suitable for articulating the sounds used in
speech.
Human Language is differs from animal communication
in several ways:
1Humans convey and receive an infinite number of messages
through space whereas animal communication system is
extremely limited and undeveloped.
2. Language makes use of clearly distinguishable, discrete,
separately identifiable symbols, while animal communication
systems are often continuous and non-discrete.
3. Animal communication systems are closed systems and
permit no change whereas language is modifiable, extendable
and open-ended.
4. Human language is structurally more complex than animal
communication system.
Chapter Three
The development of writing: It is important, when we
consider the development of writing, to keep in mind that
large number of languages in the world today are used only in
the spoken form. They do not have a written form. For those
languages that have writing system, the development of
writing, as we know it is relatively recent phenomenon.
The earliest writing system for which we have clear evidence
is the kind that Geoffery Nunberg is referring to as
“cuneiform” marked on clay tables about 5000 years ago. An
ancient script that has obvious connection to writing systems
that use today can de identified in inscriptions dated around
3,000 years ago.
Pictograms and ideograms: When some of the pictures came
to represent particular images, we can describe the product as a
form of picture-writing , or pictograms. In this way, a shape of
the sun might come to be used for the sun.
In time, this picture might develop into more fixed symbolic
form, and come to be used for heat and day time as well as sun.
The symbol extends from sun to heat, it is moving from
something visible to something conceptual. This type of symbol
is considered to be part of system of idea writing, or ideograms.
The distinction between pictograms and ideograms is
essentially a difference in the relationship between the symbol
and entity it represents. The more ‘picture-like’ forms are
pictograms and the more abstract derived forms are ideograms.
Logograms: It is a symbol represents a word. A good
example of logographic writing is the system used by the
“Sumerians” in the southern part of modern Irag around
5000 years a go. Because of the particular shapes used in
their symbols, these inscriptions are more generally
described as cuneiform writing.
→ The relationship between the written form and the object
it represents has become arbitrary and we have a clear
example of word-writing or logograms.
→ A modern writing system that is based, to a certain extent,
on the use of logograms or characters are used as
representations of the meaning of word.
1. Picture-writing = pictograms ҉ sun.
2. Idea-writing = ideograms ʘ heat, daytime.
3. Word-writing = Ϫ fish.
Rebus writing: One way of using existing symbols to
represent the sounds of language is through a process
known as rebus writing. “Symbol represents the sound”.
e.g. The sound of English word “eye”. We can imagine how
the pictograms ʘ could have developed into the logograms.
The Sounds of Language
Phonetics:
The general study of the characteristics of speech sounds is
called phonetics. Our main interest will be in articulatory
phonetics, which is the study of how speech sounds are made, or
‘articulated’. Other areas of study are acoustic phonetics, which
deals with the physical properties of speech as sound waves in the
air, and auditory phonetics (perceptual phonetics) which deals
with the perception, via the ear, of speech sounds.
Voiced and Voiceless sounds:
In articulatory phonetics, we investigate how speech sounds are
produced using the complex oral equipment we have. We start
with the air pushed out by the lungs, up through the
trachea(windpipe) to the larynx. Inside the larynx are your vocal
cords take two positions:
1. When the vocal cords are spread, the air from the lungs passes
between them unimpeded.
Sounds produced in this way are described as voiceless.
2. When the vocal cords are drawn together, the air from the
lungs repeatedly pushes them apart as it passes through
creating a vibration effect. Sounds produced in this way are
described as voiced.
Place of articulation: It is a point or place where the sounds
are made they are:
1. Bilabials, sounds like /p, b, w, m/
2. Labiodentals. /f, v/
3. Dentals. /Ɵ, ð/.
4. Alveolars. /t, d, s, z, n/
5. palatals. /∫, Ʒ, ʧ, ʤ/
6. Velars. /k, g, ŋ/
7. Glottal. /h/
Manner of Articulation: It means the manner in which the
air passes through the vocal tract. That is by showing the
way or how sounds are produced, they are:
1. Stops or plosives. /p, b, t, d, k, g/
2. Fricatives. /f, v, Ɵ, ð, s, z, ∫, Ʒ, h/
3. Affricates. /ʧ, ʤ/
4. Nasals. /n, m, ŋ/
5. Laterals. /l/
6. Semi vowels. /w, j, r /
Words and word formation process
There are some basic processes by which new words are
created:
1. Etymology: The study of the origin and history of a
word is known as etymology. This word comes to use
through Latin, but it has origin in Greek. A term which
like many of our technical words. e.g. handbook, aviation.
2. Coinage: One the least common processes of word
formation in English is coinage. It is invention of totally
new terms. Mostly trade names for commercial products.
e.g. aspirin, nylon, Vaseline, sandwich, jeans, Fahrenheit.
3. Borrowing: It is the taking over of words from other
languages. English language has adopted a vast number of
words from other languages for Dutch): croissant
(French), dope (Dutch), lilac (Persian), piano (Italian),
sofa (Arabic), tycoon (Japanese).
4. Compounding: It is joining of two separate words to
produce a single form. e.g. bookcase, sunburn, textbook,
wallpaper, wastebasket. These are nouns. Adjectives: e.g.
good- looking, low- paid.
5. Blending: The combination of two forms to produce a
single new word. It is typically taking only the beginning
of one word and joining it to the end of the other word.
e.g. gasohol = (gasoline and alcohol). Smog = (smoke
and fog). Brunch = (breakfast and lunch)
Telecast = (television and broadcast).
6. Clipping: It is reduction or shorter form
e.g. ad = advertisement.
flu = influenza.
exam = examination.
prof = professor.
References
1. The study of Language
George Yule. Cambridge University
2. An Introduction to Linguistics.
Pushpindal. New Delhi
3. An Introduction to Linguistics.
Dr. Muhammad Ali
Linguistics 1 -320
Level Three
Prepared by: Dr. Ahmed Benyo