Languageis thehumancapacity for acquiring and using complex systems ofcommunication, anda languageis any specific example of such a system. The scientific study of language is calledlinguistics.Estimates of the number of languages in the world vary between 6,000 and 7,000. However, any precise estimate depends ona partly arbitrary distinction between languages anddialects.Natural languagesarespokenorsigned, but any language can beencodedinto secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactilestimuli– forexample, ingraphic writing,braille, orwhistling . This is ...to relatesignswith particularmeanings.Oralandsign languagescontain aphonologicalsystem that governs how symbols are used to form sequences known as words ormorphemes, and asyntacticsystem that governs how words and morphemes are combined to form phrases and utterances.Human language has the properties ofproductivity,recursivity, anddisplacement, and relies entirely on social convention and learning. Its complex structure affords a much wider range of expressions than any known system ofanimal communication. Language is thought to have originated when earlyhomininsstarted gradually changing their primate communication systems, acquiring the ability to form atheory of other mindsand a sharedintentionality. This development is sometimes thought to have coincided with an increase in brain volume, and many linguists see the structures of language as having evolved to serve specific communicative and social functions. Language is processed in many different locations in thehuman brain, but especially inBrocasandWernickes areas. Humansacquirelanguage through social interaction in early childhood, and children generally speak fluently when they are approximately three years old. The use of language is deeply entrenched in humanculture. Therefore, in addition to its strictly communicative uses, language also has many social and cultural uses, such as signifying groupidentity,social stratification, as well associal groomingandentertainment.Languagesevolveand diversify over time, and the history of their evolution can be reconstructed bycomparingmodern languages to determine which traits their ancestral languages must have had in order for the later developmental stages tooccur. A group of languages that descend from a common ancestor is known as alanguage family. The languages that are most spoken in the world today belong to theIndo-European family, which includeEnglish,Spanish,Portuguese,Russian, andHindi; theSino-Tibetan family, which includesMandarin Chinese,Cantonese, and many others; theAfro-Asiatic family, which includesArabic,Amharic,Somali, andHebrew; theBantu languages, which includeSwahili,Zulu,Shona, and hundreds of other languages spoken throughoutAfrica; and theMalayo-Polynesian languages, which includeIndonesian,Malay,Tagalog,Malagasy, and hundreds of other languages spoken throughout thePacific. Academic consensus holds that between 50% and 90% of languages spoken at the beginning of the twenty-first century will probably have become extinct by the year 2100.[1][2]DefinitionsMain article:Philosophy of languageThe English word language derives ultimately fromIndo-European*dn̥ǵʰwéh₂stongue, speech, language throughLatinlingua, language; tongue, andOld Frenchlanguage.[3]The word is sometimes used to refer tocodes,ciphers, and other kinds ofartificially constructed communication systemssuch as those usedforcomputer programming. A language in this sense is asystemofsignsforencodingand decodinginformation. This article specifically concerns the properties ofnatural human languageas it is studied in the discipline oflinguistics.As an object of linguistic study, language has two primary meanings: an abstract concept, and a specific linguistic system, e.g. French. The Swiss linguistFerdinand de Saussure, who defined the modern discipline of linguistics, first explicitly formulated the distinction using the French wordlangagefor language as a concept,langueas a specific instance of a language system, andparolefor the concrete usage of speech in a particular language.[4]When speaking of language as a general concept, definitions can be used which stress different aspects of the phenomenon.[5]These definitions also entail different approaches and understandings of language, and they inform different and often incompatible schools of linguistic theory.[6]Mental faculty, organ or instinctOne definition sees language primarily as themental facultythat allows humans to undertake linguistic behaviour: to learn languages and to produce and understand utterances. This definition stresses the universality of language to all humans and it emphasizes the biological basis for the human capacity for language as a unique development of thehuman brain. Proponents of the view that the drive to language acquisition is innate in humans often argue that this is supported by the fact that all cognitively normal children raised in an environment where language is accessible will acquire language without formal instruction. Languages may even spontaneously develop in environments where people live or grow up together without a common language, for example,creole languagesand spontaneously developed sign languages such asNicaraguan Sign Language. This view, which can be traced back toKantandDescartes, often understands language to be largelyinnate, for example, inChomskystheory ofUniversal Grammar, or American philosopherJerry Fodors extreme innatist theory. These kinds of definitions are often applied by studies of language within acognitive scienceframework and inneurolinguistics.[7][8]Formal symbolic systemAnother definition sees language as a formal system of signs governed by grammatical rules of combination to communicate meaning. This definition stresses that human languages can be described as closedstructural systemsconsisting of rules that relate particular signs to particular meanings.[9]Thisstructuralistview of language was first introduced byFerdinand de Saussure,[10]and his structuralism remains foundational for most approaches to language today.[11]Some proponents of this view of language have advocated a formal approach which studies language structure by identifying itsbasic elements and then by formulating a formal account of the rules according to which the elements combine in order to form words and sentences. The main proponent of such a theory isNoam Chomsky, the originator of thegenerative theory of grammar, who has defined language as a particular set of sentences that can be generated from a particular setof rules.[12]Chomsky considers these rules to be an innate feature of the human mind and to constitute the essence of what language is.[13]Formal definitions of language are commonly used informal logic, informaltheories of grammar, and in appliedcomputational linguistics.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 00:28:24 +0000
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