Language (general)

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Revision as of 16:08, 13 April 2007 by imported>Pat Palmer (→‎Study of grammar: moving this up)
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A language may be defined, in very broad terms, as a system of signals, such as voice sounds, gestures or written symbols, that encode or decode information. Determining what kinds of signals constitute language is not always a straightforward matter. Does the blossoming of a flower, whose color or scent signals bees or birds to come and pollenate it, constitute a form of language? Does a skunk spraying constitute language, since it can certainly be said to be a form of communication? Are communications that involve, say, chemicals or pheromones part of some kind of language? Can we say that signaling behavior that is learned, rather than wired in, is language, whereas signaling behavior that is instinctive is not language?

Natural language

Human languages are usually referred to as natural languages, and the science of studying them is linguistics, but linguistics is not the only scholarly area with an interest in human languages. The discovery of the oldest evidence of language, primarily via vestiges of early writing, falls under the pervue of archaeology and also history. The mechanisms related to learning of human languages may be of interest in psychology and medicine due to its exercise of higher brain function. Computer scientists have been engaged in the study of human languages for the purpose of machine translation between different human languages.


Language versus Dialect

From the point of view of historical comparative linguistics, two natural languages with significant differences but which are still mutually intelligible may be classified as being two dialects of the same language. However, the decision to term a particular regional language as its own language, versus a dialect of another language, is sometimes also the result of political divisions, cultural differences, distinctive writing systems, or other factors. Max Weinreich is credited as saying that "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy"; in other words, there may be no clearly defined line. For instance, some dialects of German are mutually intelligible with some dialects of Dutch. The transition between languages within the same language family is usually gradual (see dialect continuum).

Some like to make parallels with biology, where it is not always possible to make a well-defined distinction between one species and the next. In either case, the ultimate difficulty may stem from the interactions between languages and populations. (See Dialect or August Schleicher for a longer discussion.)

The concepts of Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache and Dachsprache are used to make finer distinctions about the degrees of difference between languages or dialects.

Animal language

Some animals communicate in a system which might be considered language, consisting either of calls or body postures used consistently for certain purposes and which are learned behavior. There are examples of multiple signals existing within one species, but signals are also sometimes used across species, such as when birds respond to chattering and tail waggles made by squirrels to warn of the presence of a predator.

The term "animal languages" is often used for non-human languages. Most researchers agree that these are not as complex or expressive as human language; they may better be described as animal communication. Some researchers argue that there are significant differences separating human language from the communication of other animals, and that the underlying principles are unrelated.

In several publicised instances, non-human animals have been trained to mimic certain features of human language. For example, chimpanzees and gorillas have been taught hand signs based on American Sign Language; however, they have never been successfully taught its grammar. There was also a case in 2003 of Kanzi, a captive bonobo chimpanzee allegedly independently creating some words to mean certain concepts. While animal communication has debated levels of semantics, it has not been shown to have syntax in the sense that human languages do.

Some researchers argue that a continuum exists among the communication methods of all social animals, pointing to the fundamental requirements of group behaviour and the existence of "mirror cells" in primates. This, however, may not be a scientific question, but is perhaps more one of definition. What exactly is the definition of the word "language"? Most researchers agree that, although human and more primitive languages have analogous features, they are not homologous.

Contructed languages

Humans have also deliberately constructed other human languages such as Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Klingon.

Formal, mathematical, and computer languages

The activity of computer engineering has produced numerous computer programming_languages, and in fact they have created several subfields of scholarly research relating to them, such as formal languages and compilers. Mathematicians have expressed various mathematical formalisms that they describe as languages.

Properties of language

Linguistic scholars have described human languages as a system of symbols (sometimes known as lexemes) and the grammar (rules) by which the symbols are manipulated. The assignment of meaning to a symbol in a human language is arbitrary. Any symbol can be mapped onto any concept (or even onto one of the rules of the grammar). For instance, there is nothing about the Spanish word nada itself that forces Spanish speakers to use it to mean "nothing". That is the meaning all Spanish speakers have memorized for that sound pattern. But for Croatian speakers nada means "hope". Not all mappings of symbols to concepts are entirely arbitrary, however; spoken language may assign meaning to symbols because the spoken sound is imitative of a natural phenomenon. Words such as "meow" sound similar to what they represent (see Onomatopoeia), but they could be replaced with words such as "jarn", and as long as everyone memorized the new word, the same concepts could be expressed with it.

Origins of human language

No one yet agrees on when language was first used by humans (or their ancestors). Estimates range from about two million (2,000,000) years ago, during the time of Homo habilis, to as recently as forty thousand (40,000) years ago, during the time of Cro-Magnon man.

(need a section here on earliest archeological evidence of emergence of writing, i.e., runes and things), or maybe something about first evidence of "written" language emerging--or, does written language stuff belong here or in a sub-article?Pat Palmer 14:47, 13 April 2007 (CDT)


See also

References


External links

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