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Lecture 2. Features of Language

Features of language

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4 views

Lecture 2. Features of Language

Features of language

Uploaded by

sweetshit99
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Features (Properties) of human language

Language is one of the means of communicating our thoughts, feelings, emotions, desires, ideas
and attitudes making use of voluntarily produced system of arbitrary vocal sounds or written
symbols.

Some important characteristic features of human language are the following:

1. Arbitrariness.

This means that there is generally no natural, inherent relationship between the signs (i.e. sounds
or letters) we produce and their meaning. For this reason different languages can use different
signs to refer to one and the same thing e.g. a flower in English is a Blume in German or a fleur
in French.

In other words, there is no logical or direct relationship between the speech sounds and what it
represents, between the speech sounds and the concepts or ideas they stand for. The relationship
between the signifier (i.e. the word) and the signified (i.e. its referent) is purely arbitrary.

There are a few exceptions to this feature of language. When language tries to mirror or ‘echo’
the sounds made by animals and objects this is called onomatop(o)eia. (Examples: cuckoo,
squelch, tick tock)

other examples in English are words like ‘buzz’, ‘hiss’, ‘rattle’, ‘bang’, ‘thud’ etc. which actually
represent the sounds of their referents. Such words are called Onomatopoeic words.
2. Displacement.

This is the ability to use language to talk about times, places and people other than the ‘here and
now’. Animal communication is context bound but human communication can be context-free.
Human beings can talk about others experiences. They can talk of objects and events which are
not present at the time and the place of speaking because the use of human language is not
directly controlled by stimulus. This property of language is called displacement. In the case of
animals, there is a direct relationship between stimulus and they can respond only to their
immediate environment.

language is dynamic.

Language is never static, it is dynamic. It goes on changing.

language is systematic.

Language is made up of sounds and smaller formal units called phonemes, morpheme and words.
A stretch of speech in any human language can be analyzed into smaller units and larger number
of meaning can be expressed by means of limited number of signals.

5. Duality (Duality of structure)

Duality (or ‘double articulation’) refers to two separate layers of language working together to
provide us with a pool of sounds which we can combine to communicate with one another. On
the one hand, we have a limited number of discrete sounds (e.g. the 44 phonemes in English)
which in isolation have no inherent meaning e.g. b, i, or n. On the other hand, we have a virtually
unlimited number of distinct meanings which we can create by combining these sounds in certain
ways e.g. bin, or nib. Various other combinations such as *bni are not meaningful in English, but
could possibly be in other languages.
6. Recursiveness (Creativity)

Since there are various ways of combining the units of language, there is considerable scope for
creativity within it. Using a few basic rules of construction, human beings can produce and
understand a large number of utterances. There is no limit to the length or number of sentences a
speaker can produce. Using a finite number of rules which are repeatedly used, a speaker can
produce grammatical sentences never uttered before.

This property of language is called recursiveness or creativity. We can add new words and
sentences to the already existing ones or even form sentences inside sentences. This property of
language is referred to as creativity. Languages always remain open-ended. The signals in human
language can be combined in a variety of ways.

7. Productivity

This is an important characteristic of human language allowing us to continuously create new


utterances, combining the ‘building bricks’ of language in ever new ways, whether these be
sounds, words or sentences. Human languages are therefore continually evolving.

8. Reflexiveness

A further feature of human language is reflexiveness, which means that we are able to use the
language to talk about language – which is typically what linguists do.

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