ENGL2005: Introduction to the Study of Language - What is Language?

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering the core design features, architectural layers, and fundamental definitions of human language introduced in ENGL2005 Lecture 1.

Language vs. language

The distinction where "Language" (capitalized) refers to human language in general, while "language" (lowercase) designates specific individual languages, such as English or Chinese.

Three main layers of Language

The structural levels constituting the anatomy of human language: sounds, words, and sentences.

Duality of patterning

A foundational design feature of Language where a limited set of meaningless elements (sounds) combine into meaningful units (words), which further combine to form larger meaningful units (sentences).

Pattern 1 (Duality of patterning)

The structural pattern in which a limited number of meaningless elements (sounds) are combined into meaningful units (words).

Pattern 2 (Duality of patterning)

The structural pattern in which meaningful units (words) are combined into larger meaningful units (sentences).

Arbitrariness

The property of Language whereby the relationship between a word's physical form (how it is pronounced) and its meaning is conventional rather than based on any inherent physical or logical likeness.

Symbolic

The quality of using one thing to represent another entirely by agreed meaning or convention, rather than by physical or logical resemblance.

Iconic

The property of a sign directly imitating or resembling what it represents, functioning as the opposite of symbolic or arbitrary representation.

Primary linguistic aspects

The foundational spoken modalities of human language: listening and speaking.

Secondary linguistic aspects

The written modalities of human language: reading and writing.

Compositionality

The semantic principle stating that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its parts and the specific way those parts are combined.

Phonotactic rules

Language-specific rules that dictate the allowable and well-formed combinations of sounds.

Asterisk ($*$)

A symbol used in linguistics to indicate ungrammaticality or ill-formedness, showing that a sequence violates linguistic rules.

Phonological rules

Rules governing how the pronunciation of specific speech sounds varies depending on the phonetic environments in which they appear.

Morphemes

Meaningful units of language smaller than words, functioning as the minimal meaningful bits that make up complex words.

Productivity

The capacity of a linguistic system allowing speakers to generate and comprehend completely novel words, usages, and sentences that neither speaker nor listener has previously encountered.

Meaning-form dissociation

The phenomenon demonstrating that a sentence can adhere to grammatical rules while being meaningless (e.g., "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"), or conversely, be ungrammatical yet still comprehensible.

Recursion

A syntactic property allowing linguistic structures to be embedded repeatedly inside structures of the same type, enabling productivity in the sense of infinite sentences and theoretically infinite sentence length.

Displacement

The property of human Language allowing speakers to communicate about entities, events, or concepts that are removed from the immediate situation—transcending the here and now, concreteness, or actual physical existence.

Charles Hocket (1960)

The linguist whose 1960 framework of the design features of Language identifies key properties such as duality of patterning, arbitrariness, productivity, and displacement.

Language vs. Communication

Communication refers to the general transmission or exchange of messages (present across many non-human species), whereas Language is a uniquely human biological capacity characterized by specific architectural and design features.