365bet娱乐

Of all human abilities, language is possibly the most impressive and by far the most suited fundamental basis of human communication. The current thinking regards language as a species-specific behaviour, part of our genetic endowment as human beings, and acquired due to the manifestation of this inborn human capacity. Language enables us to express our thoughts, desires, emotions and feelings. Further, we can re-examine and relate to historical events in the past or discuss ideas or plan yet to unfold, or talk even about abstract concepts such as morality, universe, consciousness, and so on. Thus, language itself is the bridge which connects the past, the present, and the future through generations. Of course, a widely debated question is whether human alone has the communicative competence: Is language restricted to human? In fact, biologists consider that most animate species, not just human beings, communicate. Human language, however, is different from other species鈥� communication, and in the strictest sense the term 鈥榣anguage鈥� has never been appropriately applied to animal communication even if phrases as 鈥榯he language of the bees鈥� or 鈥榯he language of the birds鈥� can be found in vogue. So, a question of considerable consequence is: What are the significant differences between animal communication and human communication? Is language unique to humans? The question demands an indepth examination of the nature of human language in general and in particular the properties of language on the one hand and the differences as well as the salient similarities between language and non-language.

Hockett (1958), a well known linguist, in his pioneer paper used the term 鈥榙esign features鈥� to refer to properties which characterize human language and are significantly absent in the communication system of other species. It is these design features that distinguishes humans from animals and thus can be regarded as 鈥榢ey properties鈥� of language. Sixteen design futures have been proposed and listed by Hockett (1963). Other linguists also exhibit many specific characteristics of human language. Taken together, they serve to answer the question 鈥業s language a unique human behaviour?鈥� The followings are some essential design features of human language regarded fully absent in animal communication system.

1. Arbitrariness

This feature states that human language is a patterned system of accidental sound symbols. It means there is no inherent relationship between forms and their meanings as their connection tends to be quite arbitrary. There is no reason why the animal known as dog in English should be called chien in French, kutta in Hindi, and so on. Those particular words used in different languages display no amount of uniformity but merely an accident of linguistic history of those languages. This, however, can be regarded as an exception to onomatopoeia. Such onomatopoeias are relatively in fewer languages all over the world. The arbitrary nature of vocal symbols that make a language is evidently absent in animal communication system.

The feature of arbitrariness transforms human language into a more potential flexible and versatile system of communication because the extension of the vocabulary is not constrained by any universal principle in matching form and meaning. There is, certainly a disadvantage, though, that enables languages become more difficult and arduous to learn.

2. Displacement

The feature enables humans to talk about experiences, situations, objects, entities or events, remote in time or space or both detached from the site of his communication. The use of human language is thus not directly controlled by stimulus. This feature is strikingly absent in communication systems of animals. In an animal communication system, there is a direct relationship between a stimulus and a response and the communicators need not respond only to their immediate environment. The case of animal communication systems is different. Bees, for example, execute dances about the source of nectar that is also detached from the place of dance (beehive), but such a communication cannot convey what happened in the previous season through their dance features. No animal has ever succeeded in producing a combination of words on its own to meet the needs of new situations. They are not capable of coming to an agreement that a particular sound is to denote a particular meaning. Whereas human beings are able to convey precise information to other members of their community through speech and narrate events in which they were not involved (Verma & Krishnaswamy 2000: 2; Rajimwale 1999: 10).

3. Productivity/ Openness/ Creativity

If animals make instinctive noise such as dance, coo, and so on to some degree they tend to accomplish the same purposes as human language but their messages and symbols are limited in quantity and dimension. The communication system of animals is instinctive and inherited that are highly restricted as far as the number of different signals their users can send and receive. The monkeys, for instance, use still nowadays the same communication system which they used many thousand years ago. The animal communication system, thus, is a closed system which is unextendable and unmodifiable. Human language, on the other hand, enables their users to construct and understand an unlimited range of utterances they have never neither themselves said, heard or encountered before without difficulty. Moreover, human language also changes according to the needs of society. For example, Old English is different from modern English.

The importance of productivity has been stressed in the recent linguistic literature, especially by Chomsky, with particular reference to the problem of accounting for the acquisition of language by children. The fact that children, at an earlier age, are able to produce utterances that they have never heard before is evidently a proof that language is not learned solely by means of imitation and memorization. Chomsky has argued thus complexity and heterogeneity is not unconstrained: it is rule-governed within the limits set by the rules of the grammar which are perhaps partly universal and partly specific to particular languages. Native speakers of a language are free to act creatively. They can create a huge number of constructions; that is, there is no limit to the length of any one sentence, it can be continued to any length by repeating the relative clause pattern and so on. It is this property that a thinker like Chomsky would say is a distinctive human way, an 鈥榦pen-endedness鈥� system (see 搂2.4.1 & 搂2.5).

4. Tradition (Cultural transmission)

Animals inherit their system of communication through heredity while human beings do not. Man is said to have an innate ability to acquire language when exposed to one. But he must learn a particular language. His innate competence helps him master the unique features of that specific language only. Hence, though it is widely accepted that certain features of universal grammar may be transmitted genetically, human language is only actually acquired through a process of learning. The human child, indeed, endowed with language faculty and not any kind of the language, gets its exposure from the linguistic environment supposed to be the linguistic input for the child and termed as 鈥榤otherese鈥�. Motherese is drawn from the language of the community but it is not a photocopy of that language. It is system that provides the necessary exposure of the language input to the growing child. So, the child acquires only that language which essentially forms part of the language community in which he is brought up. This also means if he is entirely cut off from the sounds of a language then he will not have a chance to acquire any linguistic facility enabling the use or understanding of a language.

Thus, every language, in a way, can be regarded as an outcome of evolution and convention in a community. Each generation transmits this convention onto the next. Animals do not 鈥榣earn鈥� their call systems from their elders or other members. It is merely genetically determined. That is to explain why the dogs of all countries have the same system of message and symbols, they will be mutually intelligible while language, on the other hand, is 鈥榗ulture-preserving鈥� and 鈥榗ulture-transmitting鈥�.

5. Duality of Patterning

Units in language structure simultaneously belong to two levels. For example, one is patterns of sound that is phonetic and phonological patterning, and the other is the patterns of grammar that is morphemes and words. Each of the two levels has its own principles of organization. Units of one level, the primary level, are composed of elements of another level, the secondary level, because the sounds by themselves do not convey meanings. They do so only when they become functional at another level. Their sole function is to combine with one another to make units which do have a particular meaning. A finite set of sound units, however, can be grouped and re-grouped to produce further functional constituents of the higher hierarchical order. For example, the three separate sounds /p/, /e/, and /n/ do not in themselves have any meaning but the combination of the three in a definite order pen does have a meaning. Other three sound units as /a/, /n/, /t/ can be combined together to create the word ant with a specific meaning but can also be regrouped in a different order to yield the word tan with a different meaning. Furthermore, the same words in a sentence can again be rearranged to construct a different sentence giving either the same or completely different meaning. With a sentence such as our teachers love all the students we can rearrange to generate a new sentence as all the students love our teachers (Verma & Krishnawamy 2000: 1). Thus, with this feature, a large number of different units can be formed out of a small number of elements. There is really no limit to the number of distinct language-signals that can be constructed in particular languages. Animal communication systems do not show such duality.

The five design features discussed above are major features of human language system. They are not only present in all languages, but also present to a very high degree. However, unlike human communication, these features either completely absent or appear to a very low degree in animal communication systems. Linguists in general, and biolinguists in particular, agree that language of a community, despite their commonality and language universals, is unique in its own sense with peculiarities and distinct features. It has specific phonological system as well as morphology and syntactical patterns to itself. The form-classes and functional categories, for example, of English are not shared by Hindi and those of Hindi are different from Vietnamese鈥檚 as well. Generally speaking, language shows certain inherent design features. It is these features that set human language apart from other communication forms of other species.

Language, in short, is a very important development in human evolution that has added propensity to human culture and civilization. According to Sharma (1979), 鈥渓anguage is a unique behaviour of man, and communication by means of speech sounds is of special interest because it forms by far the most suited fundamental basis of human language which alone sets the man apart from the rest of animals and gives him enormous advantages in his environmental adaptations, social organization and socialization, and expression of cognitive attainments.鈥� Even a brief comparison with animal communication systems would not only reveal its major differences but also indicate its role in human ascendancy in the animal order. Thus, unlike animal communication, human language is an acquired finite system with modifiability, flexibility, openness, novelty and creativity all possible due to its nature as a finite system of arbitrary vocal symbols inherent with grammaticality on the one hand and its social, psychological and cognitive dimensions on the other.