From the very beginning of human
civilization, human beings have felt the necessity of a medium to communicate
with each other. Language has served this purpose. Without language, human
civilization could not have come to as we know now it. Besides its being a
means of communication, it is felt in all sectors of our life. However animals
also communicate among themselves through their own language. But it is human
language which marks a difference between human beings and animals.
To answer ‘what is language?’ is not very easy
because language is a very complex human phenomenon. It is regarded as an
‘organized noise’ used in actual social situation, and as ‘contextualized
systematic sounds’.
According to Microsoft Encarta 2007, language is ‘‘the principal means used by human beings
to communicate with one another’’. In Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 13
language is defined as
‘‘a system of conventional, spoken or written
symbols by means of which human beings , as members of a social group and
participants in its culture, communicate.’’
Longman
Dictionary of Applied Linguistics (1985) defines language as –
“the system of human communication by means of a
structured arrangement of sounds or their written presentation to form larger
units, e.g.- ORPHEMES, WORDS, SENTENCES”.
Now we can cite
some statements from classic works by
well-known linguists which ‘‘will serve to give some preliminary indication
of the properties that linguists at least tend to think of as being essential
to language”.
(i) Sapir
says –
‘‘Language is
a purely human and non-instinctive method of
communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily
produced symbols’’
(Language,1921:8)
(ii) According to Bloch & Trager-
‘‘A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols
by means of which a social group co-operates’’. (Outline of
Linguistic Analysis,1942:5)
(iii) Hall tells us that language is-
“the institution whereby humans communicate and
interact with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary
symbols’’.
(An Essay on Language, 1960:158)
(iv) R.H. Robins says-
‘‘Languages are infinitely extendable and modifiable
according to the changing needs and conditions of the speakers’’. (The Structure of Language, 1971:13)
(v) Chomsky
tells us strikingly a very different note of transformational grammar-
‘‘From now I will consider a language to be a set
(finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of
a finite set of elements’’. (Syntactic Structures,1957:13)
Therefore, from these five definitions
we notice some properties of language-
arbitrariness,
flexibility and modifiability, freedom from stimulus control, and structure dependence.
Difference between human language and animal communication
Difference between human language and animal communication