What is language?

What is language?

We live in a world of language and is “ the human essence".

Language is the

source of human life and power and distinguishes humans from other animals.

Linguistic Knowledge

When you know a language, you can speak and be understood by others who know that language.

Knowledge of the Sound System

Part of knowing a language means knowing what sounds (or signs1) are in that language and what sounds are not.

Knowledge of Words

Also knowing which sounds may start a word, end a word, and follow each other.

One way this unconscious knowledge is revealed is by the way speakers of one language pronounce words from another.

Knowing a language means also knowing that certain sequences of sounds signify certain concepts or meanings.

Arbitrary Relation of Form and Meaning

The relationship between speech sounds and the meanings they represent is, for the most part, an arbitrary one.

When you are acquiring a language you have to learn that the sounds represented by the letters.

Onomatopoeic words

the words of a particular language have the meanings they do only by convention.

This conventional and arbitrary relationship between the form (sounds) and meaning (concept) of a word is also true in sign languages.

Over time these signs may change, just as the pronunciation of words changes, and the miming effect is lost.

Like buzz or murmur that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.

Sounds differ from language to language, reflecting the particular sound system of the language

Sometimes particular sound sequences seem to relate to a particular concept.

In English many words beginning with "gl" relate to sight.

Such as glare, glint, gleam, glitter, glossy, glaze, glance, glimmer, glimpse, and glisten.

"Gl" may have nothing to do with “sight” in another language, or even in other words in English

Such as gladiator, glucose, glory, glutton, globe, and so on.

The Creativity of Linguistic Knowledge

Knowing a language means being able to produce new sentences never spoken before and to understand sentences never heard before.

The creative aspect of language use.

Language is a set of learned responses to stimuli.

These sounds are not part of language.

Our creative ability also includes our understanding of new or novel sentences.

You may not believe the sentence; you may question its logic.

Creativity is a universal property of human language.

Even some involuntary cries like “ouch” contain only the sounds found in the language.