2. Human Language vs Other 'Languages'

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Human Language vs Other 'Languages' We use language, in order to communicate, to think, and to show who we

are, to which group of human beings we belong or want to belong. It's also

very hard to imagine a field in society where no language is used at all. So

it's a characteristic not just of human beings, but also of human society.

Programming

languages for computers are, or the language

of flowers, or the language of music. Are called languages in ordinary life, but not so in linguistics. What is important for human language is:

That there are native speakers. There are

people that learn those languages as infants.

That one can speak

about basically everything in it.

That it is carried and recognized by a more or less well-defined

group of human beings as their language.

Sign Languages There are many sign

languages in the world. So there's a

lot of variation in sign language, just as there is in spoken language. We don't

know how many different sign languages there are in the world. We know much less about sign languages than about spoken

languages, but there must be hundreds of them. Furthermore, sign languages

have exactly the same kind of functionality as spoken languages. They can be

used to express any kind of

thought. You can make infinitely

many sentences in them. They have native speakers.

They're groups of people, deaf communities, who

consider them to be their language.