LING 201 First Day

Hockett’s (1959) key characteristics

Duality of patterning

what you’re using to communicate isn’t inherently meaningful (ex: the word cat (s)...the s is meaningful and the cat isn’t)

Productivity

can combine bits to make new things that aren’t needed or haven't been heard)…filling in the gaps with previous knowledge of rules of sentences (multiple ways to make a singular plural…ex: making a pokemon plural when the word doesn’t actually exist… mudactyl–mudacti, mudactyls, etc)

Consequence: language can produce infinity number of possible sentences

Arbitrariness

the bits for meaning (morphemes, words) and the bits for form (phonemes, gestures) usually don’t relate….(ex: how to express animal sounds changes between languages

Interchangeability

anyone can (learn to) produce the same kinds of signals they receive (ex: repeating noises)

Displacement

what is communicated doesn’t need to be immediate, current, and/or proximate (ex: king of france–there isn’t one but people understand)

Cultural transmission

some components of how language works may be innate, but language is learned through social interaction and exposure (ex: forbidden experiment–kids ending up with no language after being isolated)