Characteristics of Language

                                                (e-content developed by Dr N. A. Jarandikar)

Characteristics of language

1.                  Duality:  (मानवी भाषा ‘ध्वनी’ आणि ‘शब्द’ — ‘phonemes’ and ‘morphemes’ अशा दोन पातळीवर कार्यरत असते.)

          Any utterance in a language consists of an arrangement of the phonemes and morphemes of that language and each morpheme is represented by some small arrangement of phonemes. Thus a language has a phonological system and a morphological system. This is called a ‘duality’ of a language.

         The phonemes are limited and meaningless. For example, in English language there are 44 phonemes. Utterance of mere phonemes does not make a language as phonemes are meaningless. But when phonemes are arranged systematically, morphemes are formed. Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units. Thus without phonemes morphemes can not be produced and without morphemes a language can not be developed.

Thus, ‘duality’ is the basic characteristic of any human language.

2.      Productivity: (मर्यादित ध्वनींच्या सहाय्याने अमर्याद वाक्यांची निर्मिती होत असते.)

          The speaker of a language may say something that he has never said nor heard before. And this new sentence is understood perfectly by his audience. Or each and every child at some point produces his first novel utterance and after that his speech habits mould him to the adult speech. This characteristic of making new sentences from the limited set of phonemes is termed as the productivity of language.

Gibbons make different calls and communication takes place. But these different calls are again limited. They can not make altogether different calls. So this communication has duality but no productivity. On the other hand, bee-dancing is productive, because the bee can report an entirely new source in nature, but bee dancing has no duality. Only human language incorporates the characteristics of ‘duality’ and ‘productivity’.

3.   Arbitrariness: (ध्वनी, शब्द आणि प्रत्यक्ष वस्तू यांचा थेट असा काहीही संबंध नसतो.)

A road-map means the area or location which it represents. But there is no precise relationship between the actual width and the width of the road drawn on paper with a scale. Similarly in a language there is no relationship between the word and its meaning. This is what we mean arbitrariness in a language. For example, in English the semantic connection between ‘m’ or ‘n’ and the phonemes /m/ /c/ or /n/ is quite arbitrary. It is accepted notion that ‘man’ means ‘human being’.  But in different languages there are different words for a ‘human being’.

In human language certain onomatopoeic words are exceptions i.e. they are not arbitrary. In such words there is a correlation between words and the meaning, e. g. buzz, hum, bang, murmur, whiz, etc.

Due to this characteristic, human beings can talk about any thing; whereas bees can only talk about nectar.

4.  Interchangeability: (वक्ता आणि श्रोता आपापली जागा बदलू शकतात.)

Interchangeability means changing between receiver-sender position. Human being can be ‘speaker’ as well as a ‘listener’. When a person 'A' speaks something, his message is decoded by the listener 'B'. And when person 'B' says something, person 'A' can be a listener. Thus, the same person becomes a speaker as well as a listener. 

This is not possible in animal communication. They can either send the message or receive the message. For example, only male deer makes mating calls which are received by the female deer. In case of honeybees only female bees perform dance to give signal about the new source of food. In case of firefly, only males produce fire patterns. 

5. Specialization:  (उचारलेली भाषा आणि body language एकमेकाला पूरक असतात.)

Human language is specialised as well as non-specialised. By specialised language, it means, the speech organs primarily produce sounds without any other physical movements.  The speech organs produce no other direct biological function. Producing sound is not an accidental process. It is not a side effect of something else the body doing. Like all other animals, human beings too have lungs, tongue, lips, vocal cords. But in animal communication, these organs are mainly meant for biological processes. Animal communication is partially speciallised. That means they can communicate limited messages. But when a dog is panting, it is essentially a biological movement which communicates nothing. This is not the case with the human communication. Without any particular body movement, human beings can produce indefinite number of sentences.  Sometimes human language can be non-specialised too. For example, when someone coughs, it communicates nothing. It is a biological process and so non-specialised.       

If a language and the physical movements or gestures are closely related, then the system is not specialized, but if they have no particular relationship the system is said to be specialized.

         For example, if one sees the wife preparing lunch, one knows that lunch is about to be served. So he may wash hands and go to the dining room. Now, the sign that lunch is lunch ready, i. e. physical movements are closely related with a language and so it is non specialized. On the other hand if the wife just says, “Lunch is ready”, there is no physical involvement in this act and so it is specialized.

      6. Displacement: (भूतकाळात घडून गेलेल्या गोष्टीबद्दल मनुष्यप्राणी बोलू शकतो.)

            Displacement means making statements about what happened at a distant place in the past. Thus a message is displaced from the time and place of transmission. So one can talk about his past, and one can plan his future

           In animal communication such displacement is not found. Gibbbon calls are never displaced. They express their fear of any other wild animal immediately, but cannot express the same experience that took place in the past. To some extent, bee-dance involves displacement. Bee can communicate to other bees, the new source of nectar. However they cannot communicate their discovery that took place in the past. On the other hand, a great deal of human speech involves displacement.

7.  Cultural transmission: (मानवी भाषा उपजत बोलली जात नाही. आजूबाजूच्या सांस्कृतिक पर्यावरणातून मनुष्यप्राणी भाषा शिकत असतो.)

           Any communicative system can be acquired by two ways: 

1. the genetic mechanism and 

2. the cultural mechanism.

          In the genetic mechanism, the communicative system is inherited from parents. The knowledge is passed from one generation to the next instinctively. The bee gets the knowledge of building beehives instinctively.

          Human language is culturally transmitted. It is not passed instinctively from one generation to the next. The cultural mechanism involves the elements such as learning, teaching and imitation. A child brought up in a particular family, learns the language of the family (learns and not inherits). But if the same child brought up in a different linguistic environment learns that language and not the parents’ language.

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