Linguistics for English Language Teaching: Sounds, Words, and Sentences

CHAPTER 3
WHAT IS LANGUAGE?

hatever else people do when they come together—whether

they play, fight, make love, or make automobiles—they talk.
We live in a world of language. We talk to our friends, our
associates, our wives and husbands, our lovers, our teachers,
our parents and in-laws. We talk to bus drivers and total strangers. We
talk face to face and over the telephone, and everyone responds with
more talk. Television and radio further swell this torent of words.
Hardly a moment of our waking lives is free from words, and even in
our dream we talk and talked to. We also talk when there is no one to
answer. Some of us talk aloud in our sleep.

The possession of language, more than any other attribute,

distinguished human from other animals. To understand our humanity
we must understand the language that makes us human. According to
the philosophy expressed in the myths and religions of many peoples,
it is language that is the source of human life and power.

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In short, language is many things—a system of communication, a

medium for thought, a vehicle for literary expression, a social
institution, a matter for political controversy, a catalyst for nation
building. All human beings normally speak at least one language and
it is hard to imagine much significant social, intellectual, or artistic
activity taking place in its absence. Each of us has a stake in
understanding something about the nature and use of language.

What is Language?

There are a number of general points that are worth making about
language. First, human language is not only a vocal system of
communication. It can be expressed in writing, with the result that it is
not limited in time or space. Secondly, each language is both arbitrary
and systematic. By this we mean that no two languages behave in
exactly the same way yet each language has its own set of rules.
Finally, there are no primitive or inferior languages. People may live
in the most primitive conditions but all languages appear to be equally
complex and all are absolutely adequate to the needs of their users. It
used to be believed that somewhere in the world would be found a
simple language, a sort of linguistic missing link between animal
communication and the language of technologically advanced
societies.

Language can be defined as a tool of communication. Both animal

and human can be communicated each other. Language is like a coin
whose two sides are expression and content. Content encompasses
what we are attempting to say; expression encompasses the way we
articulate this content; and the language is the mental code that link
the two, (Finegan and Besnier (1989: 2). A Language is a grammatical
system that has work to perform a system that speakers exploit
purposefully. Language is used to do things not merely to report them
or to talk about them.

Language can be defined by knowing its features (Bissantz, 1987:17).

The features of (i)-(iii) are also those features of animal
communication. The features of (vi)-(viii) are the true features of
human language, as follows:

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(i) a mode of communication: The mode of communication may

be vocal-auditory as in human and most animal systems, or
visual as in sign language and may other animal system (e.g.
bees), or tactile, or even chemical (e.g. moths)
(ii) semanticity: The signals in any communication system have
meaning. Without this feature, the system would consist merely
of noise (in the technical sense of a meaningless jumble).
(iii) pragmatic function: All systems of communication serve some
useful purpose(s), from helping the species to stay alive to
influencing others’ behavior in some way (as TV commercials)
(iv) interchangeability (reciprocality): Human can both send and
receive messages (both speak and listen), but not all animal can.
Fort example, the moth (Bombyx Mori) uses chemical
communication system. When the female is ready to mate, she
secretes a chemical which males can trace back to her. The
males themselves cannot secrete this chemical; they can only be
receivers. Certain fish also lack interchangeability.
(v) traditional transmission: Human have certain innate abilities
which allow us to learn a language when exposed to one. While
the ability itself is innate, humans must learn the symbols. In
most organisms, the actual signal code itself is innate, a matter
of instinct, but in a few systems, including certain bird songs and
chimpanzee signals, some of the signals seem to be instinctive
while others are learned. Humans, of course, must learn all the
signals of their language.
(vi) Productivity: With language, human have the ability to produce
and understand any number of messages that have never been
said before and which may express ideas that have never before
been expressed.
(vii) Displacement: With language, human have the ability to
communicate about something which is distant in space and/or
time. We can talk about the color red when we are not actually
seeing it, or we can talk about a friend who lives in another state
when he is not with us. Furthermore, we can talk about a class
we had last year, or the class we will take next year.
(viii) Arbitrariness: With language, the relationship between a
symbols and its meaning, if is arbitrary, cannot be figure out by
logic or rationale. The word ‘cat’, for example, does not sound
like a cat or represent a cat in any logical way. We know that the
word ‘cat’ symbolizes the furry creature that many of us have
for a pet because we have learned that word as native English

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speakers. When a symbols is arbitrary, then, there is nothing

inherent in it that designates its meaning. It must be learned.
Traugott (1980:4) explores the characteristics of language, namely:
(i) language involve symbols and sign: Language is symbolic. It
means language involves sign. In language, signs are sequences
of sounds, though these can be transferred into visual sign.
Language is mainly symbolic in that relation between the sound
sequences and their meanings are conventional and have to be
learned.
(ii) language has a system: Language is symbolic system made up of
units, functions and relation. For example, sounds are units which
combine to make words or parts of words like un- and –ion, and
these in turn are units which can be joined in systematic ways to
form larger meaningful sequences, like complex words, phrases,
or sentences. In these larger sequences, each of the smaller units
has a particular function and particular relation to all the others.
(iii) Creativity: Anyone who knows a language is able, without
specific instruction, to produce or understand utterances which
have never been heard before but which are possible within the
system. The number of sentences possible in a human language is
infinite principle.
(iv) Ambiguity: ambiguity in language result from the fact that there
is not always a one-to-one correspondence between expression
and meaning.
Hocket in Harley (1995:9) gives sixteen design features of human
language, namely:
(i) Vocal-auditory channel (communication occurs by the
producer speaking and the receiver hearing)
(ii) Broadcast transmission and directional (a signal travels out in
all directions from the speaker but can be localised in space by
the hearer)
(iii) Rapid fading (once spoken, the signal rapidly disappears and is
no longer available for inspection)
(iv) Interchangeability (adult can be both receiver and transmitter)
(v) Complete feedback (speaker can access everything about their
productions)
(vi) Specialization (the amount of energy in the signal is
unimportant; a word means the same whether it is whisphered or
shouted)

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(vii) Semanticity (signals mean something; they relate to the features

of the world)
(viii) Arbitrariness (these symbolsare abstract; except with a few
onomatopediec exceptions, they do not resemble what they stand
for)
(ix) Discreteness ( the vocabulary is made out of discrete units)
(x) Displacement (the communication system can be used to refer
to things remote in time and space)
(xi) Openness (the ability to invent new message)
(xii) Tradition (the language can be taught and learned)
(xiii) Duality patterning (only combinations of otherwise
meaningless units are meaningful__ this can be seen as applying
both at the level of sounds and words, and words and sentences)
(xiv) Prevarication (language provides us with the ability to lie and
deceive)
(xv) Reflectiveness (we can communicate about communication
system itself)
(xvi) Learnability (the speaker of one language can learn another)

According to Nasr (1975), language is a part of culture-- a part of

human behavior. Language is an acquired habit of systematic vocal
activity representing meanings coming from human experiences. One
can also say, simply, that language is an acquired vocal system for
communicating meanings. This statement tells us:
a. that language operates in a regular and systematic fashion;
b. that language is basically oral, and that the oral symbols represent
meaning as they are related to real life situations and experience,
and;
c. that language has a social function, and that without it society
would probably not exist

Properties of Human Language

When people know a language they must know how speech sounds
relate to meanings. When speaking, we produce sounds and our
hearers hear sound. Speech sounds are the medium we use to represent
what it is we are saying, that is, they represent content or meaning and
both the speaker and hearer normally know the meaning which are
conveyed by the sound produce by a speaker (always provided that

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 Chapter 3: What is language?

both the speaker and hearer speak the same language). But sounds
convey meaning only indirectly. Speech sounds do not themselves
have meaning. Words (and some other units to be studied later) have
meanings. Words when we use them come from our mouths as
sounds. But not necessarily, in writing they take the form of marks on
paper and in the case of some people who are deal, words can take the
form of signs made by the person’s hands. However, for most
speakers, a language is a complex relationship between speech sounds
and the meanings they indirectly convey.

By way of contrast, whales and porpoises produce a large range of

sounds: grunts, squeaks, whistles, among other things. If you were a
marine biologist and following a school whales, recording their
sounds what would you be able to say about whale language on the
basis of your observations of the whales’ behavior and the sounds they
made? The answer must be very little. You might be able to relate
particular sounds to particular activities, such as feeding. However,
this would not prove much since the sounds could indicate pleasure or
the type of food being consumed or call signs that food was available
and any number of other things. The problem is that as a marine
biologist you cannot crack the code because you know nothing about
how the code is organized or indeed if there is a code at all.

Kundraat (1996) states that a language has three properties. They are
(1) language is a code, (2) language is specifically human dan (3)
language is creative.

Language is a code
A language can be regarded as a code for conveying a great variety of
information. The linguistic code uses symbols—signals which mean
or convey something other than themselves. Think, for example, of
traffic lights. What are the symbols in the traffic light code, and what
meaning does each convey? In the traffic light code, each of a set of
three, vertically arranged, colored lights is associated with a particular
instruction to the motorist. A red light conveys the instruction “stop”.
A yellow light convey the instruction “prepare to stop”. A green light
conveys the instruction “proceed”. The relationship between a
particular color and the instruction it conveys is established by
convention. It is quite easy to imagine a society which used different
colors, or different signals, for the same instructions. There are
relationships between what one light conveys and what the others

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convey. Unless the lights are not working, one of them is always on
but they are never all on at once. The red light and the green light
convey conflicting messages, and it would be contradictory to have
them both on at the same time.

This simple example has some useful analogies with human

languages. A language uses sounds as its basic medium rather than
lights, but it too has a set of symbols. Each word of a language is a
symbol, a sequence of sounds or letters which is related by convention
to a particular meaning. As in the example of the lights, this
relationship is arbitrary; the living creature which is represented in
English by the sound sequence horse might just as easily be called
cheval, poard, or caballo—as it is in other languages. Also there are
relationships between symbols. For example, it is sometimes said that
no two words of a language have exactly the same meaning. Stop for a
moment and decide whether you think this is true.
Linguistic Symbols have Function and Form; Not only does a
language contain the set of symbols called words, but words are put
together to make phrases and sentences. The phrases and sentences of
a language (and, indeed, as we will see, the words themselves) have
structure. What is a structure? Look, for example, at a building, a
flower, a scaffolding, a book. The structured things are organized
according to some kind of principle or pattern. For instance, they may
consist of sequences of similar items. Various bits may relate to each
other in fixed ways. There may appear to be an overall plan to the
thing.
One of the most fundamental facts about language is that it has
structure. To illustrate this, think of a simple sentence such as Mary
swims. Say it out loud and listen to its sound. Just listening for sound,
this sentence seems to be totally unstructured sequence of noises, one
merging into the next, like a whale melody. But as a sentence in a
human language and one that we know, we can ask what structure is
there in this simple sentence, Mary swims?

The following features of the sentence appear to have structure:

1. Although the sound of the sentence Mary swims is continuous (we
do not stop between letters) it is heard as a sequence of sounds. The
first sound is a m, the second an e, as in red (or for some speakers

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as in hairy), and the third an r and so on. There are nine sounds
altogether.
2. The nine sounds of this sentence are grouped into two words, the
word Mary and the word swims. The word Mary is the name of a
person or animal; swims designates an action. You may know that
Mary is a noun and swims is a verb and that the s on the end of
swims tells us that the swimming is not taking place in the past.
3. We may also perceive that during the saying of the sequence of
individual sounds, emphasis is placed in some places more than
others, and that there are, in fact, two main places where emphasis
can be placed; either on the a of Mary or on the I of swims.
4. We might also perceive that the pitch of the speaker’s voice rises
and falls during the speaking. Normally it would fall at the end of
swims.

In the structure of this sentence a sequence of units is built up from

others. A sequence of nine sounds make up a sequence of two words.
The first four sounds go to make up the first word and the rest go to
make up the second word. We are simplifying here since it is not just
sounds which make a word into a word. We suggested above that
words also have meanings and grammatical properties such as being
nouns.
The words in turn are the constituent parts (or constituents) of the
sentence. Notwithstanding this we can see that the structure is linear,
i.e. a particular set of units in a particular order, and it is hierarchical,
i.e. one unit is made up of units lower down on the hierarchy. So the
units are on different levels.

Such a hierarchy can be represented as a tree or box.

sentence

word word

mary swims

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Tree diagram

sentence
word word
Mary swims

Box diagram

To gain an understanding of structures like this we can suppose

sentences to be rather like some trains. Let us look at a train which
consists of two engines at the front, a freight section, first and second
class passenger cars, and a caboose or guard’s van. Diagrams of such
a train might look something like this:

train

power unit rolling stock

passenger section

engine 1 engine 2 freight cars first class section second class section guard’s van

Tree diagram

train
power unit rolling stock
Engine 1 Engine 2 freight passenger cars guard’s van
cars first second
class class

Box diagram

Why choose a train as an analogy? Think for a moment of a train

appearing out of a tunnel. You first see the engine and then various
carriages until finally you see the guard’s van or caboose. When a
sentence comes from your mouth it is rather like the train emerging
from the tunnel, first one word, then another and so on until the
sentence reaches its end. We can only recognize words after they have
started to appear from someone’s mouth, just as we can only
recognize carriages when they have at least partially appeared from

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the tunnel. Furthermore, we do not know the structure of the sentence

until the last word has been uttered, just as we do not know the train is
completely out of the tunnel until the guard’s van has appeared.

In describing the structure of a train or a sentence, each unit can be

looked at in two ways. First, we can describe the function of the unit
by seeing what part it plays in the structure of the next highest unit.
The power unit functions as the first unit of the train. Secondly, we
can describe the form of the unit by examining its internal structure.
The power unit of the train has the form of two engines coupled one
behind the other.

At the top level of the hierarchy unit have no function because they do
not play a role in higher structures. Trains as such are not parts of
other larger units larger than trains. In the case of sentences it depends
what one wishes to study. For people who study the grammatical
structure of a language, the sentence can be regarded as the top level.
It therefore has no function, not being part of a larger structure. But if
one were studying people’s writing, then sentences would function in
larger units. In essays, sentences have a function in paragraphs, as
topic sentences or as sentences that expand the topic in some way.
Paragraphs have a function in the essay. There are introductory
paragraphs, intermediate paragraphs, and concluding paragraphs, all
of which have particular functions. However, because sentences have
a special kind of structure that is different from that of an essay,
grammatical analysis generally stop at the level of the sentence.

Linguistic units are constructed according to rules: As we have

seen, units of a language have an organization; that is, they made up
of a series of units, each of which may have an internal structure.
Some linguistic units (for example, the words of a language) usually
have to be learned one by one. However, larger units of the language
are often put together in a systematic way by means of rules that
combine or rearrange smaller units to form larger ones, and which
assign a meaning to the result.
What is the exact nature of the rules that determine how units in
English may be combined? This is a difficult question but we can get
some idea of diversity of such rules by looking at how they operate in
particular instances. Some rules determine which sequences of sound
are permitted to be words in English. For example, of the words blick

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and bnick: only blick is a potential English word. Speakers of English

can also locate which sequence is not permitted in the case of bnick,
namely the bn sequence. In the first instance it might seem that the
sequence is not allowed because it is more difficult to pronounce.
However, that cannot be so because it occurs in places other than
initially in a word, for instance in the word hobnailed, as in hobnailed
boots, and when it does, speakers of English have no difficulty
pronouncing it. This shows that this rule is a linguistic one and not a
purely biological one.

Other rules determine the sequencing possibilities of larger units

within words. For example, whereas both the word sanity and the
word saneness are possible, the bleakness is possible but the word
bleakity is not.

Then there are rules which determine how words fit into sentences.
For example, the sentence Mary wheeled is somehow unfinished
because the word wheel (and not the word Mary) requires additional
constituents to play a role in this sentence. We also know that there
are, corresponding to the following statements; John is eating his
breakfast, John won’t eat his breakfast, John should eat his breakfast,
John ate his breakfast, the related questions: Is John eating his
breakfast? Won’t John eat his breakfast? Should John eat his
breakfast? And Did John eat his breakfast? Regardless of the
particular form of statement and regardless of whether you or any
other speaker of English has ever come across the statement before,
you will be able to form the related question. This suggests that there
must rules for relating statements to questions and there must be rules
determining how sentences may be formed.

The important thing to realize at this point is that the knowledge you
have just tapped into is knowledge of the rules by which smaller units
of English must form larger ones. You were never taught these rules
directly, either a school or by your parents. Somehow they have come
to exist unconsciously in your mind. You used them almost without
error whenever you speak, read, write, or listen to English. In a real
way we have just tapped into your unconscious mind because that is
where your language is.

We are now ready to return to our earlier question: What is language?

And what do we know when we know a language? Language is a

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code that allows us to represent thoughts and ideas by means of

sounds (or letters). A special property of this code is that its symbols
are complex; that is they have internal structure. This means that the
sounds do not directly convey meanings. Units have structure which is
rule-governed. Speakers of language know these regularities
intuitively, although they are not able to say how. The rules are of
many different kinds. Some of them are concerned with the
combination of sounds, some with the formation of phrases and
sentences, and some with the assignment of meaning.

Language is specifically human

Imagine that you are an anthropologist entering a remote area of South
America to study a language of a tribe of people whose existence has
only recently been discovered. Assuming that the people are friendly
and co-operative, how might you go about cracking the code that is
their language?
However you proceed, the task is easier that your task with the
dolphins and whales because you know before even beginning that
language these people use will be organized in certain ways. That will
be so because the people you are dealing with are human beings you
will rightly assume that their language and yours will have some
common properties. If, when you hold up a leaf and say ‘leaf’ in
English, your new companions respond with the utterance rogan, you
may suspect that this is the word for ‘leaf’ in their language. However
wrong you may be in these guesses, throughout investigation you can
assume that the language you are studying uses sound to encode
meaning, and that meaning is attached to something like the sound
sequences that we call words. Furthermore, you can safely assume that
the words you hear will belong to grammatical classes, such as noun
and verb, and that these grammatical classes will be combinable into
phrases and sentences. There will be ways of making statements,
asking questions, giving commands, and making negative assertions.
All these properties are true of every human language, a fact that will
help you enormously in cracking the code of your new language.

Language use is creative

We can create new sentences at will by adding on to old ones. What is
more important is the fact that the rules of language allow us to put
words together in new ways to create symbols for objects and ideas
that have no pre-established symbols in language. So, language
provides a key to open the door to possible worlds, worlds which

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differ from the one we currently live in in any way which we might
imagine. By arranging words into new sequences we can imagine the
future, plan a space of telescope or journeys to the moon, reconstruct
the age of the dinosaurs, as well as write letters to friends.

Nasr (1975) describes ten characteristics of language. They are (1)

language is a sound, (2) language is systematic, (3) language is a
system of systems, (4) language is meaningful, (5) language is
arbitrary, (6) language is conventional, (7) Language is a system of
contrasts, (8) language is creative, and (9) language is unique.

Language is a sound
The statement that language is sound may appear natural since the
most common experience all men have of language is in speaking and
listening to it. But this statement is meant to point out that the sounds
of language come before, and are more important than, their
representation in writing. While the writing systems of languages have
their systematic features, the linguist considers writing and other
methods of representing language second importance to speech. All
writing systems represent only part of the important signals given in
speech, and the letters used in common alphabets, such as the familiar
Roman alphabet, represent different sounds in different language.

By regarding language basically as sound, the linguist can take

advantage of the fact that all human beings produce speech sounds
with essentially the same equipment. While the sounds of foreign
languages may sound strange or difficult to us, all of them can be
described by accounting for the movements of the articulatory organs
that produce them.

Language is systematic
Language can be represented by string of symbols. An examination of
many languages will show that the number of symbols required will
not be unlimited. As few as a dozen may be enough, while perhaps
fifty or more may e required. But whatever the number of symbols,
not all possible combinations of sounds (and, therefore, of symbols)
will occur. This illustrates parts of what is meant by saying that
language is systematic: it can be described in terms of limited number
of units that can combine only in a limited number of ways.

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Language is system of systems

Speakers of English would probably discuss the examples of table and
stable and their accepted forms in terms of two kinds of reasoning.
For example, they might say that there is no such word as *gstable
and that it is not grammatical to put another suffix after the –s of
*stables. Another way of putting this is to say that languages have
both phonological (or sound) system an a grammatical system, each
with its proper units and rules of acceptable combination and order.
Units are not permitted to combine for several reasons, phonological,
grammatical, stylistic, or semantic. Language is a system of systems,
all of which operate at the same time, but we can distinguish, fir the
sake of analysis, the units and combination rules proper to each

Language is meaningful
The reason the linguist, or anyone else, is interested in studying
language is that the sounds produced in speech are connected with
almost every fact of human life and communication. There is a
relation between the kinds of sounds speakers of various languages
make and their cultural setting. It is basically through the learning of
language that the child becomes an active members of community,
and the leaders in a society preserve and advance their leadership
largely through their ability to communicate with people through
language.

Language is arbitrary
Communication through speech alone between speakers of different
language is impossible because there is no necessary connection
between sounds that each language uses and the message that is
expressed, even the message in both language is the same. When we
say the language is arbitrary we simply pointing out the condition
required for the existence of more than one language: that there be no
direct, necessary connection between the nature of the things or ideas
language deals with and the linguistic units or combinations by which
these things or ideas are expressed. This statement is clear enough
when we consider that there are different expressions for baby or
infant in English, and that other languages use quite different-
sounding words to express the same thing—for example, German
Kind, in Spanish criatura, Turkish cojuk. If there had to be a direct
connection between the nature of the things languages talk about and

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the expressions used to represent them, there could only be one

language.

Language is conventional
If it is true that there is no connection between the things that
language deals with and the expressions we use to represent these
things, it would appear that there is nothing that we would know in
advance about language at all. This is certainly not true, since people
use language according to fixed rules. It is only when we consider an
item of language by itself that we see how arbitrary it is; but no
linguistic unit really exists alone. It is a part of a system of systems,
with regular relations to the other units of the language. In fact, the
use and formation of linguistic units is so regular that these nits almost
seem to be used according to an agreement among the speakers.

Language, therefore, can be said to be conventional as a consequence

of this apparent agreement. That agreement is not, nor could it be,
stated; rather, it is an agreement of fact, of action. Speakers in a given
community, for example, use the same sorts of expressions to name
the same things, and the same sort of expressions to name the same
things, and the same sorts of constructions to deal with similar
construction to deal with similar situation. It is the convention that
makes up and fixes linguistic systems. An important result of the
conventional nature of language is that we can be sure that a correct
description of the speech of a single representative speaker will apply
to the speech habits of others in the same community.

Language is system of contrast

One reason why a description of a single speaker’s habit can represent
the speech of a community is that language is a system of differences
to be observed. How these differences are made is not very important.
For example, parakeets cannot produce sounds exactly like human
speakers because they do not have the vocal cords or nasal cavities
that men have. Yet the sounds that they produce differ from each other
in a manner similar to speech sounds and are understood to represent
human speech. Individuals do not and cannot speak exactly like each
other; they speak alike, and in the same language, when they make the
same number of phonetic and grammatical distinctions as other
speakers.

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Language is creative
Language can be understood as a system of patterns and a system of
contrasts. Each pattern can be represented by an unlimited number of
utterances. Each utterance can differ completely in reference from
other utterances. This patterning is the basis of our ability to produce
new sentences or to understand sentences we hear for the first time.
By using the phonological, grammatical, and lexical systems in a
creative way, poets and writers or speakers can make us more aware
of possible relations among things. In this way they may be said to
create a new world for us through language.

Languages are unique

Since languages are arbitrary, systematic patterns of contrasts, each
language must be considered unique. For example, two languages may
differ in the number of parts of speech, or may require quite different
combinations of these parts, even though the number is the same. For
such reasons we have new patterns to learn in the study of foreign
languages.

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