language, a system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols by means of

which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express
themselves. The functions of language include communication, the expression of identity, play,
imaginative expression, and emotional release.

A system of objects or symbols, such as sounds or character

sequences, that can be combined in various ways following a set
of rules, especially to communicate thoughts, feelings, or
instructions.
A particular manner of expression.
The wording of a legal document or statute as distinct from the
spirit.
A set of symbols and rules used to convey information.
Characteristics of language
Definitions of language
Many definitions of language have been proposed. Henry Sweet, an English phonetician and
language scholar, stated: “Language is the expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds
combined into words. Words are combined into sentences, this combination answering to that of
ideas into thoughts.” The American linguists Bernard Bloch and George L. Trager formulated the
following definition: “A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a
social group cooperates.” Any succinct definition of language makes a number of
presuppositions and begs a number of questions. The first, for example, puts excessive weight on
“thought,” and the second uses “arbitrary” in a specialized, though legitimate, way.

Characteristics of language
A number of considerations (marked in italics below) enter into a proper understanding of
language as a subject:
Every physiologically and mentally typical person acquires in childhood the ability to make use,
as both sender and receiver, of a system of communication that comprises a circumscribed set of
symbols (e.g., sounds, gestures, or written or typed characters). In spoken language, this symbol
set consists of noises resulting from movements of certain organs within the throat and mouth. In
signed languages, these symbols may be hand or body movements, gestures, or facial
expressions. By means of these symbols, people are able to impart information, to express
feelings and emotions, to influence the activities of others, and to comport themselves with
varying degrees of friendliness or hostility toward persons who make use of substantially the
same set of symbols.
Different systems of communication constitute different languages; the degree of difference
needed to establish a different language cannot be stated exactly. No two people speak exactly
alike; hence, one is able to recognize the voices of friends over the telephone and to keep distinct
a number of unseen speakers in a radio broadcast. Yet, clearly, no one would say that they speak
different languages. Generally, systems of communication are recognized as different languages
if they cannot be understood without specific learning by both parties, though the precise limits
of mutual intelligibility are hard to draw and belong on a scale rather than on either side of a
definite dividing line. Substantially different systems of communication that may impede but do
not prevent mutual comprehension are called dialects of a language. In order to describe in detail
the actual different language patterns of individuals, the term idiolect, meaning the habits of
expression of a single person, has been coined.
Typically, people acquire a single language initially—their first language, or native tongue, the
language used by those with whom, or by whom, they are brought up from infancy. Subsequent
“second” languages are learned to different degrees of competence under various conditions.
Complete mastery of two languages is designated as bilingualism; in many cases—such as
upbringing by parents using different languages at home or being raised within a multilingual
community—children grow up as bilinguals. In traditionally monolingual cultures, the learning,
to any extent, of a second or other language is an activity superimposed on the prior mastery of
one’s first language and is a different process intellectually.
Language, as described above, is species-specific to human beings. Other members of the animal
kingdom have the ability to communicate, through vocal noises or by other means, but the most
important single feature characterizing human language (that is, every individual language),
against every known mode of animal communication, is its infinite productivity and creativity.
Human beings are unrestricted in what they can communicate; no area of experience is accepted
as necessarily incommunicable, though it may be necessary to adapt one’s language in order to
cope with new discoveries or new modes of thought. Animal communication systems are by
contrast very tightly circumscribed in what may be communicated. Indeed, displaced reference,
the ability to communicate about things outside immediate temporal and spatial contiguity,
which is fundamental to speech, is found elsewhere only in the so-called language of bees. Bees
are able, by carrying out various conventionalized movements (referred to as bee dances) in or
near the hive, to indicate to others the locations and strengths of food sources. But food sources
are the only known theme of this communication system. Surprisingly, however, this system,
nearest to human language in function, belongs to a species remote from humanity in the animal
kingdom. On the other hand, the animal performance superficially most like human speech, the
mimicry of parrots and of some other birds that have been kept in the company of humans, is
wholly derivative and serves no independent communicative function. Humankind’s nearest
relatives among the primates, though possessing a vocal physiology similar to that of humans,
have not developed anything like a spoken language. Attempts to teach sign language to
chimpanzees and other apes through imitation have achieved limited success, though the
interpretation of the significance of ape signing ability remains controversial.
In most accounts, the primary purpose of language is to facilitate communication, in the sense of
transmission of information from one person to another. However, sociolinguistic and
psycholinguistic studies have drawn attention to a range of other functions for language. Among
these is the use of language to express a national or local identity (a common source of conflict
in situations of multiethnicity around the world, such as in Belgium, India, and Quebec). Also
important are the “ludic” (playful) function of language—encountered in such phenomena as
puns, riddles, and crossword puzzles—and the range of functions seen in imaginative or
symbolic contexts, such as poetry, drama, and religious expression.
Language interacts with every aspect of human life in society, and it can be understood only if it
is considered in relation to society. This article attempts to survey language in this light and to
consider its various functions and the purposes it can and has been made to serve. Because each
language is both a working system of communication in the period and in the community
wherein it is used and also the product of its history and the source of its future development, any
account of language must consider it from both these points of view.
The science of language is known as linguistics. It includes what are generally distinguished as
descriptive linguistics and historical linguistics. Linguistics is now a highly technical subject; it
embraces, both descriptively and historically, such major divisions as phonetics, grammar
(including syntax and morphology), semantics, and pragmatics, dealing in detail with these
various aspects of language.

Historical attitudes toward language

As is evident from the discussion above, human life in its present form would be impossible and
inconceivable without the use of language. People have long recognized the force and
significance of language. Naming—applying a word to pick out and refer to a fellow human
being, an animal, an object, or a class of such beings or objects—is only one part of the use of
language, but it is an essential and prominent part. In many cultures people have seen in the
ability to name a means to control or to possess; this explains the reluctance, in some
communities, with which names are revealed to strangers and the taboo restrictions found in
several parts of the world on using the names of persons recently dead. Such restrictions echo
widespread and perhaps universal taboos on naming directly things considered obscene,
blasphemous, or very fearful.
Perhaps not surprisingly, several independent traditions ascribe a divine or at least a supernatural
origin to language or to the language of a particular community. The biblical account,
representing ancient Jewish beliefs, of Adam’s naming the creatures of the earth under God’s
guidance is one such example:
So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and
brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every
living creature, that was its name. (Genesis 2:19)
Norse mythology preserves a similar story of divine participation in the creation of language, and
in India the god Indra is said to have invented articulate speech. In the debate on the nature and
origin of language given in Plato’s Socratic dialogue Cratylus, Socrates is made to speak of the
gods as those responsible for first fixing the names of things in the proper way.
A similar divine aura pervades early accounts of the origin of writing. The Norse god Odin was
held responsible for the invention of the runic alphabet. The inspired stroke of genius whereby
the ancient Greeks adapted a variety of the Phoenician consonantal script so as to represent the
distinctive consonant and vowel sounds of Greek, thus producing the first alphabet such as is
known today, was linked with the mythological figure Cadmus, who, coming from Phoenicia,
was said to have founded Thebes and introduced writing into Greece (see Phoenician language).
By a traditional account, the Arabic alphabet, together with the language itself, was given to
Adam by God.
The later biblical tradition of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9) exemplifies three aspects of
early thought about language: (1) divine interest in and control over its use and development, (2)
a recognition of the power it gives to humans in relation to their environment, and (3) an
explanation of linguistic diversity, of the fact that people in adjacent communities speak different
and mutually unintelligible languages, together with a survey of the various speech communities
of the world known at the time to the Hebrew people.
The origin of language has never failed to provide a subject for speculation, and its
inaccessibility adds to its fascination. Informed investigations of the probable conditions under
which language might have originated and developed are seen in the late 18th-century essay of
the German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder, “Abhandlung über den Ursprung der
Sprache” (“Essay on the Origin of Language”), and in numerous other treatments. But people
have tried to go farther, to discover or to reconstruct something like the actual forms and
structure of the first language. This lies forever beyond the reach of science, in that spoken
language in some form is almost certainly coeval with Homo sapiens. The earliest records of
written language, the only linguistic fossils humanity can hope to have, go back no more than
4,000 to 5,000 years. Some people have tried to claim that the cries of animals and birds, or
nonlexical expressions of excitement or anger, evolved into human speech, as if onomatopoeia
were the essence of language; these claims have been ridiculed for their inadequacy (by, for
example, the Oxford philologist Max Müller in the 19th century) and have been given nicknames
such as “bowwow” and “pooh-pooh” theories.
On several occasions attempts have been made to identify one particular existing language as
representing the original or oldest tongue of humankind, but, in fact, the universal process of
linguistic change rules out any such hopes from the start. The Greek historian Herodotus told a
(possibly satirical) story in which King Psamtik I of Egypt (reigned 664–610 bce) caused a child
to be brought up without ever hearing a word spoken in his presence. On one occasion it ran up
to its guardian as he brought it some bread, calling out “bekos, bekos”; this, being said to be the
Phrygian word for bread, proved that Phrygian was the oldest language. The naiveté and
absurdity of such an account have not prevented the repetition of this experiment elsewhere at
other times.
In Christian Europe the position of Hebrew as the language of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament)
gave valid grounds through many centuries for regarding Hebrew, the language in which God
was assumed to have addressed Adam, as the parent language of all humankind. Such a view
continued to be expressed even well into the 19th century. Only since the mid-1800s has
linguistic science made sufficient progress finally to clarify the impracticability of speculation
along these lines.
When people have begun to reflect on language, its relation to thinking becomes a central
concern. Several cultures have independently viewed the main function of language as the
expression of thought. Ancient Indian grammarians speak of the soul apprehending things with
the intellect and inspiring the mind with a desire to speak, and in the Greek intellectual tradition
Aristotle declared, “Speech is the representation of the experiences of the mind” (On
Interpretation). Such an attitude passed into Latin theory and thence into medieval doctrine.
Medieval grammarians envisaged three stages in the speaking process: things in the world
exhibit properties; these properties are understood by the minds of humans; and, in the manner in
which they have been understood, so they are communicated to others by the resources of
language. Rationalist writers on language in the 17th century gave essentially a similar account:
speaking is expressing thoughts by signs invented for the purpose, and words of different classes
(the different parts of speech) came into being to correspond to the different aspects of thinking.
Such a view of language continued to be accepted as generally adequate and gave rise to the sort
of definition proposed by Henry Sweet and quoted above. The main objection to it is that it either
gives so wide an interpretation to thought as virtually to empty the word of any specific content
or gives such a narrow interpretation of language as to exclude a great deal of normal usage. A
recognition of the part played by speaking and writing in social cooperation in everyday life has
highlighted the many and varied functions of language in all cultures, apart from the functions
strictly involved in the communication of thought, which had been the main focus of attention
for those who approached language from the standpoint of the philosopher. To allow for the full
range of language used by speakers, more-comprehensive definitions of language have been
proposed on the lines of the second one quoted at the beginning of this article—namely, “A
language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group cooperates.”
Despite the breadth of this definition, however, its use of the word vocal excludes all languages
that are not vocalized, particularly manual (signed) languages.
A rather different criticism of accepted views on language began to be made in the 18th century,
most notably by the French philosopher Étienne Bonnot de Condillac in “Essai sur l’origine des
connaissances humaines” (1746; “Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge”) and by Johann
Gottfried von Herder. These thinkers were concerned with the origin and development of
language in relation to thought in a way that earlier students had not been. The medieval and
rationalist views implied that humans, as rational, thinking creatures, invented language to
express their thoughts, fitting words to an already developed structure of intellectual competence.
With the examination of the actual and the probable historical relations between thinking and
communicating, it became more plausible to say that language emerged not as the means of
expressing already formulated judgments, questions, and the like but as the means of thought
itself, and that humans’ rationality developed together with the development of their capacity for
communicating.
The relations between thought and communication are certainly not fully explained today, and it
is clear that it is a great oversimplification to define thought as subvocal speech, in the manner of
some behaviourists. But it is no less clear that propositions and other alleged logical structures
cannot be wholly separated from the language structures said to express them. Even the
symbolizations of modern formal logic are ultimately derived from statements made in some
natural language and are interpreted in that light.
The intimate connection between language and thought, as opposed to the earlier assumed
unilateral dependence of language on thought, opened the way to a recognition of the possibility
that different language structures might in part favour or even determine different ways of
understanding and thinking about the world. All people inhabit a broadly similar world, or they
would be unable to translate from one language to another, but they do not all inhabit a world
exactly the same in all particulars, and translation is not merely a matter of substituting different
but equivalent labels for the contents of the same inventory. From this stem the notorious
difficulties in translation, especially when the systematizations of science, law, morals, social
structure, and so on are involved. The extent of the interdependence of language and thought—
linguistic relativity, as it has been termed—is still a matter of debate, but the fact of such
interdependence can hardly fail to be acknowledged.