Language is a term most commonly used to refer to so called "natural languages In the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written. Natural language is distinguished from constructed languages" — the forms of communication Communication is a process of transferring information from one entity to another. Communication processes are sign-mediated interactions between at least two agents which share a repertoire of signs and semiotic rules. Communication is commonly defined as "the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing, considered peculiar to humankind Humans are a species of animal known taxonomically as Homo sapiens , and are the only extant member of the Homo genus of bipedal primates in Hominidae, the great ape family. However, in some cases "human" is used to refer to any member of the genus Homo. By extension the term also refers to the type of human thought process Cognition is the scientific term for "the process of thought." Usage of the term varies in different disciplines; for example in psychology and cognitive science, it usually refers to an information processing view of an individual's psychological functions. Other interpretations of the meaning of cognition link it to the development of which creates and uses language. Essential to both meanings is the systematic creation, maintenance and use of systems of symbols A symbol is something such as an object, picture, written word, sound, or particular mark that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On maps, crossed sabres may indicate a battlefield. Numerals are symbols for numbers . All language consists of symbols, which dynamically reference concepts A concept is a cognitive unit of meaning—an abstract idea or a mental symbol sometimes defined as a "unit of knowledge," built from other units which act as a concept's characteristics. A concept is typically associated with a corresponding representation in a language or symbology[citation needed] such as a single meaning of a term and assemble according to structured patterns In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of sentences, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics. Linguists do not normally use the to communicate meaning. The scientific study of language is called linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning (semantics and pragmatics). Grammar encompasses morphology (the formation and composition of words), syntax (the rules that determine how words.

A language is a system System is a set of interacting or interdependent entities forming an integrated whole of signs (symbols, indices, icons) for encoding and decoding information Information, in its most restricted technical sense, is an ordered sequence of symbols. As a concept, however, information has many meanings. Moreover, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and representation. Since language and languages became an object of study by ancient grammarians, the term has had many and different definitions. The English word derives from Latin lingua, "language, tongue," "tongue," a metaphor A metaphor is an analogy between two objects or ideas; the analogy is conveyed by the use of a metaphorical word in place of some other word. For example: "Her eyes were glistening jewels" based on the use of the physical organ in speech Speech is the vocalized form of human communication. It is based upon the syntactic combination of lexicals and names that are drawn from very large vocabularies. Each spoken word is created out of the phonetic combination of a limited set of vowel and consonant speech sound units. These vocabularies, the syntax which structures them, and their.[1] The ability to use speech originated in remote prehistoric times, as did the language families A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term comes from the Tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a biological family tree or in a subsequent modification to species in a in use at the beginning of writing. The processes by which they were acquired were for the most part unconscious.

In modern times, a large number of artificial languages A planned or constructed language—known colloquially or informally as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary have been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally. There are many possible reasons to create a constructed language: to ease human communication ; to bring fiction have been devised, requiring a distinction between their consciously innovated type and natural language In the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written. Natural language is distinguished from constructed languages. The latter are forms of communication Communication is a process of transferring information from one entity to another. Communication processes are sign-mediated interactions between at least two agents which share a repertoire of signs and semiotic rules. Communication is commonly defined as "the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing, considered peculiar to humankind Humans are a species of animal known taxonomically as Homo sapiens , and are the only extant member of the Homo genus of bipedal primates in Hominidae, the great ape family. However, in some cases "human" is used to refer to any member of the genus Homo. Although some other animals make use of quite sophisticated communicative systems, and these are sometimes casually referred to as animal language Animal language is the modeling of human language in non human animal systems. While the term is widely used, researchers agree that animal languages are not as complex or expressive as human language, none of these are known to make use of all the properties that linguists use to define language.

The term “language” has branched by analogy into several meanings.[1] The most obvious manifestations are spoken languages such as English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of or Spoken Chinese Although the English word dialect is often used to translate the Chinese terms huà 话, yǔ 語, or fāngyán 方 . However, there are also written languages A written language is the representation of a language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will instinctively learn or create spoken or gestural languages.[citation needed] and other systems of visual symbols such as sign languages A sign language is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns (manual communication, body language) to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's thoughts. In cognitive science Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of mind and intelligence, e.g., how information is represented and transformed in a brain or in a machine. It consists of multiple research disciplines, including psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, learning sciences, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and education. It the term is also sometimes extended to refer to the human cognitive facility Cognition is the scientific term for "the process of thought." Usage of the term varies in different disciplines; for example in psychology and cognitive science, it usually refers to an information processing view of an individual's psychological functions. Other interpretations of the meaning of cognition link it to the development of of creating and using language. Essential to both meanings is the systematic creation In linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word. Word formation is sometimes contrasted with semantic change, which is a change in a single word's meaning. The line between word formation and semantic change is sometimes a bit blurry; what one person views as a new use of an old word, another person might view as a new word derived and usage Speech is the vocalized form of human communication. It is based upon the syntactic combination of lexicals and names that are drawn from very large vocabularies. Each spoken word is created out of the phonetic combination of a limited set of vowel and consonant speech sound units. These vocabularies, the syntax which structures them, and their of systems of symbols A symbol is something such as an object, picture, written word, sound, or particular mark that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On maps, crossed sabres may indicate a battlefield. Numerals are symbols for numbers . All language consists of symbols, each pairing a specific sign with an intended meaning, established through social conventions.[2]

In the late 19th century Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce (September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Peirce was educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for 30 years. It is largely his contributions to logic, mathematics, philosophy, and semiotics (and his founding of called this pairing process semiosis Semiosis is any form of activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, including the production of meaning. Briefly – semiosis is sign process. The term was introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) to describe a process that interprets signs as referring to their objects, as described in his theory of sign relations, or semiotics and the study of it semiotics In linguistics, semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of sign processes , or signification and communication, signs and symbols. It is usually divided into the three following branches:.[3] According to another founder of semiotics, Roman Jakobson Roman Osipovich Jakobson (October 11, 1896, Moscow - July 18, 1982, Boston) was a Russian linguist and literary theorist, the latter portrays language as code A code is a rule for converting a piece of information into another form or representation (one sign into another sign), not necessarily of the same type in which sounds (signantia) signify concepts (signata).[4] Language is the process of encoding A code is a rule for converting a piece of information into another form or representation (one sign into another sign), not necessarily of the same type signata in the sounds forming the signantia and decoding A code is a rule for converting a piece of information into another form or representation (one sign into another sign), not necessarily of the same type from signantia to signata.

Concepts themselves are signantia for the objective reality being conceived. When discussed as a general phenomenon then, "language" may imply a particular type of human thought Thoughts are forms conceived in the mind, rather than the forms perceived through the five senses. Thought and thinking are the processes by which these concepts are perceived and manipulated. Thinking allows beings to model the world and to represent it according to their objectives, plans, ends and desires. Similar concepts and processes include that can be present even when communication is not the result, and this way of thinking is also sometimes treated as indistinguishable from language itself. In Western philosophy Western philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western or Occidental world, as distinct from Eastern or Oriental philosophies and the varieties of indigenous philosophies, language has long been closely associated with reason Reason is a mental faculty found in humans, that is able to generate conclusions from assumptions or premises. In other words, it is amongst other things the means by which rational beings propose reasons, or explanations of cause and effect. In contrast to reason as an abstract noun, a reason is a consideration which explains or justifies, which is also a uniquely human way of using symbols. In Ancient Greek Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning the Archaic , Classical (c. 5th–4th centuries BC), and Hellenistic (c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD) periods of ancient Greece and the ancient world. It is predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek. Its Hellenistic phase is known as Koine (& philosophical terminology, the same word, logos Logos is an important term in philosophy, analytical psychology, rhetoric and religion. Originally a word meaning "word," "speech," "account," or "reason," it became a technical term in philosophy, beginning with Heraclitus (ca. 535–475 BC), who used the term for the principle of order and knowledge in the, was a term for both language or speech and reason, and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes Thomas Hobbes , in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, remembered today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory used the English word "speech" so that it similarly could refer to reason, as presented below.

Contents

The properties of language

Main article: semiotics In linguistics, semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of sign processes , or signification and communication, signs and symbols. It is usually divided into the three following branches:

Arbitrary symbols

A key property of language is that its symbols are strongly arbitrary Arbitrariness is a term given to choices and actions subject to individual will, judgment or preference, based solely upon an individual's opinion or discretion.[5] Any concept or grammatical rule can be mapped onto a symbol. In other words, most languages make use of sound, but the combinations of sounds used do not have any necessary and inherent meaning; they are merely an agreed-upon convention to represent a certain thing by users of that language. For instance, the sound combination nada carries the meaning of "nothing" in the Spanish language Countries where Spanish has official status. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 25% or more of the population. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 10-20% of the population. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 5-9.9% of the population and also the meaning "thread" in the Hindi language Hindi (Devanāgarī: हिन्दी or हिंदी, IAST: Hindī, IPA: [ˈɦɪndiː] ) is the name given to various Indo-Aryan languages, dialects, and language registers spoken in northern and central India, Pakistan, Fiji, Mauritius, and Suriname. Standard Hindi is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India, the official language of the. There is nothing about the word A word is the smallest free form in a language, in contrast to a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning. A word may consist of only one morpheme (e.g. wolf), but a single morpheme may not be able to exist as a free form (e.g. the English plural morpheme -s) nada itself that forces Hindi speakers to convey the idea of "thread", or the idea of "nothing" for Spanish speakers. Other sets of sounds (for example, the English words nothing and thread) could equally be used to represent the same concepts, but all Spanish and Hindi speakers have acquired or learned to correlate their own meanings for this particular sound pattern. Indeed, for speakers of Slovene Slovene or Slovenian is a South Slavic language spoken by approximately 2.4 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in Slovenia. Slovene is one of the 23 official and working languages of the European Union and some other South Slavic languages South Slavic languages comprise one of three branches of Slavic languages. There are some 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two branches of Slavic, West and Eas, by a belt of German, Hungarian, and Romanian, the sound combination carries the meaning of "hope", while in Indonesian Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries, it means "tone".

This arbitrariness applies to words even with an onomatopoetic An onomatopoeia or onomatopœia, from the Greek ὀνοματοποιία , is a word that imitates or suggests the source of the sound that it describes. Onomatopoeia (as an uncountable noun) refers to the property of such words. Common occurrences of onomatopoeias include animal noises, such as "oink" or "meow" or "roar& dimension (i.e. words that to some extent simulate the sound of the token referred to). For example, several animal names (e.g. cuckoo The cuckoos are a family, Cuculidae, of near passerine birds. The order Cuculiformes, in addition to the cuckoos, also includes the turacos . Some zoologists and taxonomists have also included the unique Hoatzin in the Cuculiformes, but its taxonomy remains in dispute. The cuckoo family, in addition to those species named as such, also includes, whip-poor-will, and katydid) are derived from sounds made by the respective animal, but these forms did not have to be chosen for these meanings. Non-onomatopoetic words can stand just as easily for the same meaning. For instance, the katydid is called a "bush cricket" in British English, a term that bears no relation to the sound made by the animal. In time, onomatopoetic words can also change in form, losing their mimetic status. Onomatopoetic words may have an inherent relation to their referent, but this meaning is not inherent; thus they do not violate arbitrariness. For instance, an English speaker may describe a dog's bark as "ruff" or "bow-wow," as to where the Japanese would describe it as "wan-wan."

Related symbols

The meanings of signs may be arbitrary, but the process of assigning meaning is not; it is the activity of the entire society; individuals are not allowed to change them arbitrarily, even though they may contribute some new meanings. A continuous thread of socially recognized meaning requires that the allowed meanings of individual signs be related. The relatedness of signs was formally recognized by Charles W. Morris, who divided semiotics into three fields, based on "the three dimensions of semiosis:"[6]

"...syntactics studies the relation between a given sign vehicle and other sign vehicles, semantics studies the relations between sign vehicles and their designata, and pragmatics studies the relation between sign vehicles and their interpreters....

These types of relatedness allow a finite set of signs to be combined into a potentially infinite number of meaningful utterances.

The study of language

The history of linguistics

Main article: History of linguistics

The historical record of linguistics begins in India with Pāṇini, the 5th century BC grammarian who formulated 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology, known as the Aṣṭādhyāyī (अष्टाध्यायी) and with Tolkāppiyar, the 2nd century BC grammarian of the Tamil work Tolkāppiyam (தொல்காப்பியம்).[7] Pāṇini’s grammar is highly systematized and technical. Inherent in its analytic approach are the concepts of the phoneme, the morpheme, and the root; Western linguists recognized the phoneme only some two millennia later.[8] Tolkāppiyar's work is perhaps the first to describe articulatory phonetics for a language. Its classification of the alphabet into consonants and vowels, and elements such as nouns, verbs, vowels, and consonants, which he put into classes, was also a breakthrough at the time. In the Middle East, the linguist Sibawayh (سیبویه) made a detailed and professional description of Arabic in 760 AD in his monumental work, Al-kitab fi al-nahw (الكتاب في النحو, The Book on Grammar), bringing many linguistic aspects of language to light. In his book, he distinguished phonetics from phonology.

In the West, interest in the study of languages was equally as ancient as it was in the East,[9] but the grammarians of the classical languages did not utilize the same methods or reach the same conclusions as did their unknown contemporaries in the Indic world. By the 16th century, the study of language was subsumed under the topic of philology, practiced by such educators as Roger Ascham, Wolfgang Ratke and John Amos Comenius.[10] Substantial progress was not made in linguistics until Sanskrit literature became available to Western scholars through the window of British India in the 18th century. The combination of Eastern and Western linguistics resulted in the rise of Indo-European linguistics and the first use of the comparative method by William Jones, Friedrich Schlegel, Franz Bopp, August Friedrich Pott, August Schleicher and others.[11] Bloomfield attributes "the first great scientific linguistic work of the world" to Jacob Grimm, who wrote Deutsche Grammatik.[12] It was soon followed by other authors writing similar comparative studies on other language groups of Europe. The scientific study of language was broadened from Indo-European to language in general by Wilhelm von Humboldt, of whom Bloomfield asserts:[12]

"This study received its foundation at the hands of the Prussian statesman and scholar Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767—1835), especially in the first volume of his work on Kavi, the literary language of Java, entitled Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts ('On the Variety of the Structure of Human Language and its Influence upon the Mental Development of the Human Race')."

Early in the 20th century, Ferdinand de Saussure introduced the idea of language as a "semantic code".[13] Substantial additional contributions similar to this came from Hjelmslev, Émile Benveniste and Roman Jakobson,[14] which are characterized as being highly systematic.[14]

Language and culture

Main article: Culture

The connection between the human capacities for culture and language has been noted as far back as classical antiquity. As language and culture are both in essence symbolic systems, 20th century cultural theorists have applied the methods of analyzing language developed in the science of linguistics to also analyze culture.

History of concepts of the origin of language

Ancient Tamil inscription at the Brihadeeswara Temple in Thanjavur Main article: Origin of language

Even before the theory of evolution made discussion of more animal-like human ancestors commonplace, philosophical and scientific speculation on the function of language in man was frequent throughout history. Aristotle, for example, believed that language was part of the intrinsic nature of man, related to their natural propensities to be "political," which in Greek meant to dwell in city-state communities (Greek: poleis):[15]

"Hence it is evident that the state is a creature of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal ... man is the only animal whom she has endowed with the power of speech ... the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and likewise the just and unjust. And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, ... and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state."

Thomas Hobbes, followed by John Locke and others, said that language is an extension of the "speech" that humans have within themselves as part of reason, one of the most primary characteristics of human nature. Hobbes in Leviathan while postulating as did Aristotle that language is a prerequisite for society, attributed it to innovation and learning after an initial impulse by God:[16]

But the most noble and profitable invention of all others was that of speech ... whereby men register their thoughts, recall them when they are past, and also declare them to one another for mutual utility and conversation; without which there had been amongst men neither commonwealth, nor society, nor contract, nor peace, no more than amongst lions, bears and wolves. The first author of speech was God himself, that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as He presented to his sight; for the Scripture goeth no further in this matter."

In Hobbes, man proceeds to learn on his own initiative all the words not taught by God: "figures, numbers, measures, colours ...." which are taught by "need, the mother of all inventions." Hobbes, one of the first rationalists of the Age of Reason, identifies the ability of self-instruction as reason:[17]

"For reason, in this sense, is nothing but reckoning ... of the consequences of general names agreed upon for the marking and signifying of our thoughts; ...."

Others have argued the opposite, that reason developed out of the need for more complex communication. Rousseau, despite writing[18] before the publication of Darwin's theory of evolution, said that there had once been humans with no language or reason who developed language first, rather than reason, the development of which he explicitly described as a mixed blessing, with many negative characteristics.

Since the arrival of Darwin, the subject has been approached more often by scientists than philosophers. For example, neurologist Terrence Deacon in his Symbolic Species has argued that reason and language "coevolved". Merlin Donald sees language as a later development building upon what he refers to as mimetic culture,[19] emphasizing that this coevolution depended upon the interactions of many individuals. He writes:

A shared communicative culture, with sharing of mental representations to some degree, must have come first, before language, creating a social environment in which language would have been useful and adaptive.[20]

The specific causes of the natural selection that led to language are, however, still the subject of much speculation, but a common theme going back to Aristotle is that many theories propose that the gains to be had from language and/or reason were probably mainly in the area of increasingly sophisticated social structures.

In more recent times, a theory of mirror neurons has emerged in relation to language. Ramachandran[21] has gone so far as to argue that "mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments". Mirror neurons are located in the human inferior frontal cortex and superior parietal lobe, and are unique in that they fire when one completes an action and also when one witnesses an actor performing the same action. Various studies have proposed a theory of mirror neurons related to language development.[22][23][24]

Natural languages

Main article: Natural language Some of the areas of the brain involved in language processing: Broca's area (Blue), Wernicke's area (Green), Supramarginal gyrus (Yellow), Angular gyrus (Orange), Primary Auditory Cortex (Pink)

Human languages are usually referred to as natural languages, and the science of studying them falls under the purview of linguistics. A common progression for natural languages is that they are considered to be first spoken and then written, and then an understanding and explanation of their grammar is attempted.

Languages live, die, polymorph, move from place to place, and change with time. Any language that ceases to change or develop is categorized as a dead language. Conversely, any language that is in a continuous state of change is known as a living language or modern language. It is for these reasons that the biggest challenge for a speaker of a foreign language is to remain immersed in that language in order to keep up with the changes of that language.

Making a principled distinction between one language and another is sometimes nearly impossible.[25] For instance, there are a few dialects of German similar to some dialects of Dutch. The transition between languages within the same language family is sometimes gradual (see dialect continuum).

Some like to make parallels with biology, where it is not 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.

Artificial languages

Constructed languages

Main article: Constructed language

Some individuals and groups have constructed their own artificial languages, for practical, experimental, personal or ideological reasons. International auxiliary languages are generally constructed languages that strive to be easier to learn than natural languages; other constructed languages strive to be more logical ("loglangs") than natural languages; a prominent example of this is Lojban.

Some writers, such as J. R. R. Tolkien, have created fantasy languages, for literary, artistic or personal reasons. The fantasy language of the Klingon race was created by Marc Okrand for the Star Trek movies and a number of translated works have been released by fans.

Constructed languages are not necessarily restricted to the properties shared by natural languages.

This part of ISO 639 also includes identifiers that denote constructed (or artificial) languages. In order to qualify for inclusion, the language must have a literature and be designed for the purpose of human communication. Specifically excluded are reconstructed languages and computer programming languages.

International auxiliary languages

Main article: International auxiliary language

Some languages, most constructed, are meant specifically for communication between people of different nationalities or language groups as an easy-to-learn second language. Several of these languages have been constructed by individuals or groups. Natural, pre-existing languages may also be used in this way; their developers merely catalogued and standardized their vocabulary and identified their grammatical rules. These languages are called naturalistic. One such language, Latino Sine Flexione, is a simplified form of Latin. Two others, Occidental and Novial, were drawn from several Western languages.

To date, the most successful auxiliary language is Esperanto, invented by ophthalmologist Zamenhof. It has a relatively large community roughly estimated at about two million speakers worldwide, with a large body of literature, songs, and is the only known constructed language to have native speakers, such as the Hungarian-born American businessman George Soros. Other auxiliary languages with a relatively large number of speakers and literature are Interlingua and Ido.

Controlled languages

Main article: Controlled natural language

Controlled natural languages are subsets of natural languages whose grammars and dictionaries have been restricted in order to reduce or eliminate both ambiguity and complexity. The purpose behind the development and implementation of a controlled natural language typically is to aid non-native speakers of a natural language in understanding it, or to ease computer processing of a natural language. An example of a widely used controlled natural language is Simplified English, which was originally developed for aerospace industry maintenance manuals.

Formal languages

Main article: Formal language

Mathematics, Logics and computer science use artificial entities called formal languages (including programming languages and markup languages, and some that are more theoretical in nature). These often take the form of character strings, produced by a combination of formal grammar and semantics of arbitrary complexity.

Programming languages

Main article: Programming language

A programming language is a formal language endowed with semantics that can be utilized to control the behavior of a machine, particularly a computer, to perform specific tasks. Programming languages are defined using syntactic and semantic rules, to determine structure and meaning respectively.

Programming languages are employed to facilitate communication about the task of organizing and manipulating information, and to express algorithms precisely. Some authors[who?] restrict the term "programming language" to those languages that can express all possible algorithms; sometimes the term "computer language" is applied to artificial languages that are more limited.[citation needed]

Animal communication

Main article: Animal language

The term "animal languages" is often used for non-human systems of communication. Linguists and semioticians do not consider these to be true "language", but describe them as animal communication on the basis on non-symbolic sign systems[26], because the interaction between animals in such communication is fundamentally different in its underlying principles from human language. Since animals aren't born with the ability to reason, there is no true and developped "culture" among animals as it exists in humans. Without this culture, there is no need for complex language. While a dog may successfully communicate a threatening position with a growl, that growl carries with it a natural inclination of intended intimidation. Similarly, when a human screams, it is a natural communication to alert other humans of impending dangers. While both of these examples are successful in communicating an idea, they are instinctive in nature to its respective species and do not reflect a complex language system that had been evolved through history. Nevertheless, some scholars have tried to disprove this mainstream premise through experiments on training chimpanzees to talk. Karl von Frisch received the Nobel Prize in 1973 for his proof of the language and dialects of the bees.[27]

In several publicized instances, non-human animals have been taught to understand certain features of human language. Chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans have been taught hand signs based on American Sign Language. The African Grey Parrot, which possesses the ability to mimic human speech with a high degree of accuracy, is suspected of having sufficient intelligence to comprehend some of the speech it mimics. Hand signing has also been tested in ichthyology, the study of fish, as the fish, betta (The Siamese fighting fish) were used in the most common experiments and the test subjects responded when a human held up their hands to their cheeks, like fins. The fish took a "double take" and though to understand the human.[citation needed][clarification needed] More commonly, a dog may be taught to understand commands such as "sit" and "speak" through a rewarding process. Though animals can be taught to understand human commands, they are not capable of repeating those commands. Without the ability to reason, animals are also unable to learn the concepts of complex philosophical ideas such as the past and future, which are core fundamentals of complex language. Without this ability, animals are not able to pass these teachings on towards other animals of the same species. Thus, even though we can teach animals to understand aspects of human language, they are unable to develop that language around a culture suitable for them. Humans on the other hand, have been proven to learn languages not native to them, and use those languages as a native speaker would, and pass those along to other members of their native culture.

While proponents of animal communication systems have debated levels of semantics, these systems have not been found to have anything approaching human language syntax.[28]

Notes

  1. ^ a b "language". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (3rd ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1992.
  2. ^ Saussure 1983, p. 32.
  3. ^ Nöth 1995, pp. 13, 50.
  4. ^ Nöth 1995, p. 239
  5. ^ Saussure 1983, p. 67.
  6. ^ Nöth 1995, p. 50.
  7. ^ Zvelebil 1973, p. 40. Zvelebil dates the Ur-Tolkappiyam to the late 2nd BC.
  8. ^ Barton, David (1994). Literacy: an introduction to the ecology of written language. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. p. 122.
  9. ^ Bloomfield 1914, p. 307.
  10. ^ Bloomfield 1914, p. 308.
  11. ^ Bloomfield 1914, p. 310.
  12. ^ a b Bloomfield 1914, p. 311.
  13. ^ Clarke, David S. (1990). Sources of semiotic: readings with commentary from antiquity to the present. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. pp. 143–144.
  14. ^ a b Holquist 1981, pp. xvii-xviii.
  15. ^ Politics, 1253a lines 1-18 (Book I.2)
  16. ^ Hobbes 1651, pp. 16–17.
  17. ^ Hobbes 1651, p. 24.
  18. ^ Second Discourse
  19. ^ Evolutionary Origins of the Social Brain. In O. Vilarroya and F. F. i Argimon (eds.), Social Brain Matters: Stances on the Neurobiology of Social Cognition. Rodopi, 2007, 18: 215-222.
  20. ^ Imitation and Mimesis. In S. Hurley and N. Chater (eds.), Perspectives on Imitation: From Neuroscience to Social Science, Volume 2: Imitation, Human Development, and Culture. MIT Press, 2005, 14:282-300.
  21. ^ http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/ramachandran_p1.html
  22. ^ http://psycserver.psyc.queensu.ca/donaldm/reprints/evolutionaryOrigins18.pdf
  23. ^ http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=uJTc5wlAYAUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA229&dq=Arbib+From+grasping+to+complex+imitation:+mirror+systems+on+the+path+to+language&ots=-b6u5FyQbC&sig=yupQRSaXgn43CcBKuJImHqXspwg
  24. ^ http://www3.isrl.uiuc.edu/~junwang4/langev/localcopy/pdf/christiansen03trends.pdf
  25. ^ "Language". The New Encyclopædia Britannica: MACROPÆDIA. 22. Encyclopædia Britannica,Inc.. 2005. pp. 548 2b.
  26. ^ Cobley, P. 2010. Routledge Companion to Semiotics. London.
  27. ^ Frisch, K. v. 1953. 'Sprache' oder 'Kommunikation' der Bienen? Psychologische Rundschau 4.
  28. ^ Sebeok, T. A. 1996. Signs, bridges, origins. In: Trabant, Jürgen (ed.), Origins of Language. Budapest: Collegium Budapest, 89–115.

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