Features of concept of Language

Ibrohimova Mohlaroy
Student
Phone number:958371008
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Annotation: This article explores the concept as an important concept in
cognitive linguistics. The difference between the lexical meaning of a word and
the concept can be seen in their categorical position, that is, the lexical
meaning of a word is a unit of the semantic field of language.

Grammar and vocabulary make up the structured communication system known as

language. It is the main way that people communicate meaning, both when
speaking and when signing. It can also be expressed in writing. Human language is
defined by its cultural and historical diversity, with considerable changes noted
between cultures and over time.[1] The productive and displacement qualities of
human languages allow for the construction of an endless number of sentences as
well as the reference to concepts, things, and events that are not directly mentioned
in the discourse. The use of human language relies on social norm and is learned
through learning.
There are between 5,000 and 7,000 different human languages believed to exist in
the world. Accurate approximations rely on a fictitious division (dichotomy) made
between languages and dialects.[2] Any language can be encoded into secondary
media utilizing aural, visual, or tactile cues, such as writing, whistling, signing, or
braille. Natural languages are spoken, signed, or both. Stated differently, human
language is not dependent on any particular modality; rather, authentic human
speech or gestures can be encoded or transcribed using written or signed language.
When used broadly, the term “language” can describe the set of rules that make up
complex communication systems, the set of utterances that can be produced from
those rules, or the cognitive capacity to learn and use those systems, depending on
philosophical viewpoints regarding the definition of language and meaning.
Semiosis is the process by which all languages associate signals with specific
meanings. The phonological system in oral, manual, and tactile languages controls
the way symbols are joined to form word or morpheme sequences, and the
syntactic system controls the way words and morphemes are combined to produce
phrases and utterances.
With the development of shared intentionality and the capacity to build a theory of
mind, early hominins are assumed to have eventually separated from previous ape
communication systems to evolve language.[3][4] There are theories that link this
development to an increase in brain volume, and many linguists believe that
language structures have developed throughout time to fulfill particular social and
communicative purposes. The human brain has numerous areas dedicated to
processing language, but two in particular stand out: Wernicke’s and Broca’s.
People learn to communicate through social interaction in their early years, and by
the time they are three years old, most can speak with fluency. Culture and
language are interdependent. As a result, language has societal purposes beyond
only communication, such as denoting social stratification and group identity.
Languages change and become more diverse throughout time. By comparing
present languages to their ancestral languages, one can reconstruct the history of
language evolution and ascertain what characteristics those languages had in
common for the later developmental phases to occur. A language isolate is a
language that has been shown to have no living or non-living link with any other
language. On the other hand, a language family is a collection of languages that
share a common ancestor. Furthermore, spurious languages might not have existed
at all, and there are a large number of unclassified languages whose links are
unknown. Most academics agree that by the year 2100, between 50% and 90% of
the languages that were spoken at the start of the twenty-first century will most
likely be extinct.
Through Latin lingua, “language; tongue,” and Old French language, Proto-Indo-
European “tongue, speech, language” is ultimately whence the English term
language originates.[8] The term can also refer to ciphers, codes, and other types of
artificially created communication systems, including computer programming
languages that are technically specified. In this sense, a formal language is a set of
signals for information encoding and decoding, as opposed to traditional human
languages. The characteristics of natural human language as it is researched in the
field of linguistics are the special focus of this article.
Language” as a subject of linguistic study has two main meanings: an abstract idea
and a particular linguistic system, as “French”. The distinction was first clearly
articulated by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who founded the modern
field of linguistics. He did this by using the French words language, langue, and
parole to refer to language as a concept, a specific instance of a language system,
and the actual use of speech in a given language.
Definitions that highlight various facets of the phenomenon might be employed
when discussing language as a generic notion. In addition to implying various
methods and interpretations of language, these definitions also underlie various,
frequently incompatible schools of linguistic theory.[11] Discussions concerning
the nature and history of language date back thousands of years. Greek
philosophers like Plato and Gorgias discussed the relationship between ideas,
words, and reality. Gorgias maintained that communication and truth were
consequently impossible as language could neither express the objective
experience nor the subjective experience. According to Plato, language is a means
of representing thoughts and conceptions that exist before and independently of
language, which makes communication possible.
It became popular to make assumptions about the origins of language during the
Enlightenment and its discussions regarding the origins of humans. Theorists like
Rousseau and Johann Gottfried Herder maintained that language was closer to
music and poetry in its earliest forms than it was to the logical exposition of
reasoned thought. Language was born out of the instinctive expression of
emotions. On the other hand, rationalist philosophers like René Descartes and Kant
held the opposite opinion. Around the turn of the 20th century, thinkers began to
wonder about the role of language in shaping our experiences of the world – asking
whether language simply reflects the objective structure of the world, or whether it
creates concepts that in turn impose structure on our experience of the objective
world.
According to one definition, language is essentially the mental capacity that
enables people to engage in linguistic behavior, such as language acquisition and
speech production and comprehension. This definition places special emphasis on
the fact that language is a universal human ability and highlights the biological
basis for this capacity as a distinct brain development. Language acquisition
proponents contend that all cognitively sound children raised in a setting where
language is available will pick up language without formal instruction, supporting
their theory that people have an inbuilt need to acquire language. Even in situations
where individuals live or grow up together without speaking the same language,
languages can nevertheless develop on their own; this is the case with creole .
According to a different definition, language is a formal system of signs that
convey meaning through the use of grammatical combinations. This description
emphasizes how human languages can be thought of as closed structural systems
made up of rules that connect certain signs to specific meanings.[16] Ferdinand de
Saussure was the first to present this structuralist interpretation of language, and
many linguistic theories still have their roots in his structuralism.
A formal method that analyzes language structure by first defining its fundamental
components and then providing a formal explanation of the principles by which
those elements join to generate words and sentences has been supported by certain
supporters of Saussure’s theory of language. Noam Chomsky, the creator of the
generative theory of grammar, is the primary proponent of this theory. He defines
language as the building of sentences that can be formed using transformational
grammars.[19] According to Chomsky, these principles form the foundation of
language and are an intrinsic quality of the human mind.[20] On the other hand,
formal logic, formal linguistics, and applied computational linguistics all
frequently employ these transformational grammars.
According to yet another definition, language is a system of interchange that
allows people to exchange spoken or symbolic expressions. According to this
concept, language serves social purposes and is used by people to manipulate
objects in their surroundings and express themselves. Grammar’s grammatical
structures are explained by their communication roles according to functional
theories of grammar, which also hold that grammar was “tailored” to meet the
communicative demands of its users through an adaptation process.
This understanding of language is linked to the study of language in linguistic
anthropology, sociolinguistics, and pragmatic, cognitive, and interactive
frameworks. Functionalist theories seek to treat language as dynamic phenomena,
as structures that are always in the process of changing as they are deployed by
their speakers. According to this perspective, the study of linguistic typology—the
categorization of languages based on their structural characteristics—is important
because the processes leading up to grammaticalization often follow paths that are
somewhat influenced by typology.[22] In the philosophy of language, the notion of
pragmatics as being important to language and meaning is generally connected
with Wittgenstein’s later works and with ordinary language philosophers such as J.
L. Austin, Paul Grice, John Searle, and W.O. Quine.