properties of human language

Question 1

displacement

Answer 1

It allows the users of language to talk about events and things not present in the immediate environment. Animal communication is generally considered to lack this property. We can find it in the communication of honey bees but it is rather limited. This feature of language allows the human to create fiction and to describe possible future worlds.

Question 2

arbitrariness

Answer 2

There is no natural connection between a linguistic form and its meaning. For example, the form of word “cat” has no natural relationship with that animal. The property of linguistic signs is their arbitrary relationship with the objects they are used to indicate. The forms of human language demonstrate this property because they do not, in any way, fit the objects they denote.

Question 3

productivity

Answer 3

Most animals have a very limited number of messages they can send or receive. This type of limitation is not found in human language. Language users manipulate their linguistic resources to produce new expressions and new sentences. Productivity (creativity) is an aspect of language which is linked to the fact that the potential number of utterances in any human language is infinite. All animal signals, on the other hand, have a feature called fixed reference that means each signal is fixed as relating to a particular object or occasion.

Question 4

cultural transmission

Answer 4

We usually inherit the colour of eyes or height from our parents but we do not inherit their language. We acquire a language with other speakers and not from parental genes. Cultural transmission is the process whereby language is passed on from one generation to the next. Human infants, growing up in isolation, produce no instinctive language.

Question 5

duality

Answer 5

Language is organized in two levels: one level is when we produce individual sounds, and in another level we produce these sounds in a particular combination and we are producing a meaning that is different from other combination of these sounds. At one level we have distinct sound and at another level we have distinct meaning. With a limited set of distinct sounds we are capable of producing Avery are number of sound combinations which are distinct in meaning. Phonemes are meaningless in isolation but they become meaningful only when they are combined with other phonemes.

Question 6

discreteness

Answer 6

the sounds we use in language are meaningfully distinct. Discreteness is the property of language when each sound is treated as discrete. Speech units can be ordered and reordered, combined and split apart.

Question 7

vocal-auditory channel

Answer 7

Communicator speaks, and receiving individual hears.

Question 8

inter-changeability (reciprocity)

Answer 8

Transmitters can become receivers, and vice versa; and we can also each repeat any message.

Question 9

specialization

Answer 9

We communicate just for the purpose of communicating (not incidentally to some other primary function). Direct energy consequences are unimportant.

Question 10

rapid fading

Answer 10

Message is transitory and does not persist.

Question 11

broadcast transmission and directional reception ( = non directionality)

Answer 11

Message goes out in all directions, and receiver can tell what direction message comes from (sign language used line-of-sight transmission instead).

Question 12

semanticity

Answer 12

symbols used, which are phonemes and morphemes, have particular meanings.

Question 13

prevarication

Answer 13

we can say things that are false or hypothetical.

Question 14

reflexiveness ( =metalanguage)

Answer 14

We can use language to talk about language (e.g. noun, adjective, sentence…)

Question 15

learnability

Answer 15

we can learn new languages (easier in childhood).