What is language?

Flowchart nodes

• 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.