Comprehensive Study Guide on the Nature, Design Features, and Characteristics of Human Language ＇
The Nature and Definition of Language and Linguistics
Definition of Language: Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. A single, universally perfect, and completely satisfactory definition has yet to be formulated. However, linguists generally agree on several essential features that define the nature of human language: it is systematic, symbolic, arbitrary, primarily vocal, human-specific, and used for communication.
Definition of Linguistics: Linguistics is defined as the systematic study of language. The Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics defines linguistics specifically as "the study of language as a system of human communication." It does not limit its study to one specific language of a single community, but studies the universal human system of language as used by all human beings.
Main Branches of Linguistics:
- Phonetics: The study of the physical characteristics, production, transmission, and perception of speech sounds.
- Phonology: The study of the organization, patterns, and functions of speech sounds within a specific language system.
- Morphology: The study of the internal structure of words and the rules governing word formation.
- Syntax: The study of the rules and principles that govern sentence structure and how words combine to form phrases and sentences.
- Semantics: The study of linguistic meaning in words, phrases, and sentences.
- Pragmatics: The study of language use in context and how speakers generate and interpret meaning in real-life communication.
Design Features of Human Language
Definition of Design Features: Design features refer to the defining properties of human language that distinguish it from any animal communication system. The primary design features include arbitrariness, duality, productivity, and displacement.
1. Duality (双重结构性 / Double Articulation):
- Language is organized simultaneously at two distinct levels or layers.
- Lower / Basic Level: A level of sound structures which are individually meaningless (phonemes or sound units).
- Higher Level: A primary layer of larger, meaningful units (morphemes, words, and sentences).
- Mechanism: Underlying sound units or phonemes always combine to form the higher-level meaningful units of language (double articulation).
2. Arbitrariness (任意性):
- There is no logical, natural, or intrinsic connection between a linguistic form (whether a spoken sound or a written word) and its assigned meaning.
- While language is inherently arbitrary, it is not entirely arbitrary. Exceptions include:
- Onomatopoeic Words: Words that echo or imitate the physical sounds of objects or actions.
- Compound Words: Words where partial motivation exists through the combination of known meaningful roots.
3. Productivity (能产性 / Creativity / Open-Endedness):
- Productivity is the property that enables language users to construct and interpret an infinite number of novel signals or utterances.
- Example: A speaker can say, and a listener can understand in the proper register, a sentence such as: "A red-eyed elephant is dancing on the small hotel bed with an African gibbon." Even if no one has ever uttered or heard this exact sentence before, it is easily parsed and understood.
- Rule-Bound Creativity: Unlike general artistic creativity, linguistic productivity never operates outside the structural constraints of language. For this reason, Noam Chomsky referred to productivity as "rule-bound creativity".
4. Displacement (移位性):
- Displacement refers to the property of language allowing speakers to refer to contexts, events, time periods, and locations removed from the immediate situation of the speaker (referring to past time, future time, distant locations, or imaginary events).
- Contrast with Animal Signals: When a dog barks, it can only bark for something or at someone existing in the immediate here and now. A dog cannot bark sorrowfully for a lost love or a bone to be lost in the future.
- Animal Exception: The communication system of bees exhibits a tiny degree of displacement (communicating the location of nectar source relative to time and space), but this represents an unspeakably minute fraction compared to human displacement.
The Symbolic Nature of Language
Cultural Learning: Symbolic signs must be acquired as part of a culture. Consequently, human language belongs to this class of culturally learned signs, making language fundamentally symbolic.
Lack of Physical Link: Language is a symbolic system because there is little to no intrinsic connection between speech sounds and the entities they represent. Words become linked to objects, actions, and abstract ideas purely through social convention.
Preeminence in Human Society: In human society, the symbolic nature of language is more critical and complex than any other sign system. It is more embracing and representative of all features found across all types of signs. Without language's symbolic signs, humans would be unable to communicate flexibly about arbitrary topics.
The Arbitrary Nature of Language
Absence of Intrinsic Link: Language is arbitrary because no natural connection binds the vocal sounds produced by speakers to the external objects or concepts to which those sounds refer.
Cross-Linguistic Variation: The reality that different languages employ completely different words to represent the exact same object demonstrates language's arbitrary nature. Meaning relies entirely on a tacit social agreement connecting sound and concept.
- Literary Example: The quote "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" exemplifies arbitrariness: the physical properties of the object remain identical regardless of the phonetic label attached to it.
Arbitrariness of Combinatorial Rules: Beyond individual words, the syntactic rules governing how signs combine to express complete thoughts differ entirely across languages. No single set of structural rules can claim superior logic, correctness, or absolute truth over another.
- Comparative Example:
- In English, standard word order dictates: "I like beer."
- In Chinese, the equivalent concept can be structured as: "啤酒我很喜欢" (literally, "Beer I very much like").
- Translating the Chinese structural order literally into English sounds unnatural, yet neither structural formulation possesses a superior claim to accuracy, correctness, or objective truth.
The Primacy of Vocal Language
Primary Medium: The primary medium of language is sound (speech). All written systems are demonstrably built upon units derived from spoken language.
Five Reasons Establishing Language as Primarily Vocal:
- Developmental Primacy: Children naturally learn to speak long before they learn to read or write.
- Spontaneous Acquisition: Children acquire spoken language automatically as they grow up within a speech community.
- Historical Precedence: Spoken language developed far earlier than written language in human history.
- Structural Dependence: Writing systems are structurally derived from and based upon spoken speech units.
- Frequency of Usage: People interact using spoken language with significantly higher frequency than written language.
Human-Specific Characteristics of Language
- Key Factors Demonstrating Human Specificity:
- Displacement: Humans can refer to real or unreal entities, as well as events in the past, present, or future. Animals lack this capacity (e.g., a dog cannot bark for a bone to be lost).
- Creativity / Openness / Productivity: Humans possess the unique capacity to generate and comprehend an infinite number of novel utterances.
- Dominance of Learning: Cultural learning is a significantly more vital factor in human language acquisition than in animal communication systems, which rely largely on genetic instinct.
- Structural Complexity: Human language possesses an extraordinarily complex, hierarchical structural design.
- Open-Ended Systems: Animal communication systems are strictly closed (limited to a fixed repertoire of signals), whereas human languages are open-ended systems.
- Performative Function: Humans can perform social and physical acts through language itself (performative language), using words in the same way they interact with physical objects.