Language Property Definittion Samples

A Communicative and informative signals There is a distinction between specifically 1

communicative signals and those which may be
unintentionally informative signals. When we talk
about distinctions between human language and
animal communication, we are considering both
in terms of their potential as a means of
intentional communication.
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B Displacement (Allen, Yule, Saussure) Animal communication seems to be designed 1
exclusively for this moment, here and now. It
cannot effectively be used to relate events that
are far removed in time and place. 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 even
allows us to talk about things and places (e.g.
angels, fairies, Santa Claus, Superman, heaven,
hell) whose existence we cannot even be sure of.
Research shows that 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, with variable tempo, for
further away and how far). Even then, bee
communication has displacement in an extremely
limited form
“I-I hardly know , sir, just at present – at least i know who i was when i got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then. DISPLACEMENT page 60
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C Arbitrariness (Allen, Yule, Brown) Generally speaking, there is no ‘natural’ 1 "Only mustard isn't a bird" (p. 133)
connection between a linguistic form and its
meaning. The connection is quite arbitrary. We
can’t just look at a word and, from its shape, for
example, determine that it has a natural and
obvious meaning. The linguistic form has no
natural or ‘iconic’ relationship between the
sound sequence it is made up of the object it
represents out in the world. This aspect of the
relationship between linguistic signs and objects
in the world is described as arbitrariness.
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Productivity (Allen, Yule, Saussure) Humans are continually creating new expressions 1
and novel utterances by manipulating their
linguistic resources to describe new objects and
situations. This property is described as
productivity (or ‘creativity’ or ‘open-endedness’)
and it is linked to the fact that the potential
number of utterances in any human language is
infinite. The communication systems of other
creatures do not appear to have this type of
flexibility. Nor does it seem possible for creatures
to produce new signals to communicate novel
experiences or events. This limiting feature of
animal communication is described in terms of
fixed reference. Each signal in the system is fixed
as relating to a particular object or occasion. “There is a large mustard-mine near here” page 134
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Cultural transmission (Allen, Yule, Brown, Saussure) We acquire a language in a culture with other 1
speakers and not from parental genes. 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. However, we are not born with
the ability to produce utterances in a specific
language such as English. We acquire our
first language as children in a culture. The
general pattern in animal communication is
that creatures are born with a set of specific
signals that are produced instinctively.
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Duality (Allen, Yule, Saussure) Human language is organized at two levels or 1 no - on (p. 62 and 63)
layers simultaneously. This property is called
duality (or ‘double articulation’). In speech
production, we have a physical level at which
we can produce individual sounds, like n, b
and i. As individual sounds, none of these
discrete forms has any intrinsic meaning. In a
particular combination such as bin, we have
another level producing a meaning that is
different from the meaning of the combination
in nib. This is one of the most economical
features of human language because, with a
limited set of discrete sounds, we are capable
of producing a very large number of sound
combinations (e.g. words) which are distinct in
meaning

Interchangeability (Allen) Alice repeats what the Caterpillar says

Semanticity (Allen) Alice eats the mushroom without much

further explanation needed

Discreteness (Allen, Yule) wife - life (p. 65)

Systematic (Brown, Saussure)

Conventional (Brown)