INTRODUCTION TO

LINGUISTICS
Properties of Human Language Instructor:
Prof. Dr. Siusana Kweldju

Language is the most frequently used and most highly developed form of human
communication that man has possessed. It is a group of sounds distinguishable
from one another and arranged in a system by means of which thoughts and
feelings can be communicated from one person to another. Written language is
considered as a substitute for speech and hence it is a dialect of the ‘real’ language-
Spoken Language.

Displacement
Cultural
Arbitrariness
Discreteness
Productivity
Variability
transmission

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We also use gestures in communication in order to convey a message and express

ourselves. Body language is a powerful expressive technique in non-verbal
communication. However, gestures are not sign language. McNeill (1992) argues
that there is a clear difference between gestures and signed languages. Gestures do
not convey meaning in the same way as a signed language or a spoken language
that segments and delineates meaning. Gestures are instantaneous with the thought
process while sentences composed of words, necessarily, have a temporal
component. Like language, the verbal communication, signed languages also use
the process of segmentation and linearization to form a hierarchy are essential
characteristics of all linguistic systems. Gestures are multidimensional and present
meaning complexes without undergoing segmentation or linearization. Gestures
are global and synthetic and never hierarchical. Gestures are closely linked with
speech but have characteristics of their own that are different from spoken
language.
There have been a number of attempts to determine the defining properties of
human language.  However, there are seven essential properties of natural language
as an empirical phenomenon.
1. Displacement
Animal communication is designed for the immediate place and time (here and
now). However, humans are able to communicate not only about things that
happened at the time and place of talking, but also about other situation, real or
unreal, past or future and in different locations. We can even talk about things and
places whose existence we cannot be sure of. e.g. angels, fairies, Superman, Santa
Claus, heaven, hell. This capacity is called displacement. It allows the users of
language to talk about events and things which do not exist in the immediate
environment; they can also create fiction and describe possible future worlds.
Bees also have displacement capacity in their communication system but in some
limited fashion. They can direct other bees to a food source. although in some
limited fashion this might mean that bees' communication system also have this
property.(Wiśniewski,2007). Generally animal communication lacks this
characteristic. For example, when a worker bee finds a source of nectar. Locations
of this nectar can be found by performing a complex dance routine. Depending on
the type 01 of dance (tail-wagging dance, with variable tempo, for further away
and how far and round dance for nearby). The other bees can work out where this
recently discovered feast can be found. This ability of bee to indicate a location
some distance away must mean that bee communication has at least some degree
of displacement as a property. Bee communication has displacement in an
exceedingly limited form. Certainly, the bee can lead other bees to a foot source.
But, it must be the most recent food source. (Yule,1985:20,21) The factors
involved in the property of displacement, as it is manifested in human language,
are much more comprehensive than the communication of one location.
 2 Arbitrariness
All language can be assumed to be arbitrary despite occasional iconic
characteristics. Generally, words have no principles and systematic connections
with what they mean. There is no ‘natural’ connection between a linguistic form
and its meaning. The first three numbers in English are one, two, three,- but in
Chinese they are yi, er, san. Neither language has the "right" word for the numerals
or anything else, because there is no such thing (Bolton, 1982: 5).
In English, there are such iconic forms as: knock (knocking on the door or
window), swish (whistle, rustle). The sounds in these symbols try to imitate the
sounds made by the things they represent. This sound is called onomatopoeia; that
is, when a word’s pronunciation imitates its sound, e.g. 'hiss' or 'boom’.
Onomatopoeic words are relatively rare in human language. Also, even
onomatopoetic words for sounds, like ding-dong and click, that are supposed to
sound like the noise they name, actually vary from language to language. (Falsold,
Conner-linton, 2006).

3. Productivity
Productivity refers to the limitless ability to use any natural language. It is also
known as open-endedness or creativity. In its narrow sense, productivity is also
applied to particular forms or constructions (such as affixes) that can be used to
produce new instances of the same type. In this sense, productivity is most
commonly discussed in connection with word-formation.
"Humans are continually creating new expressions and novel utterances by
manipulating their linguistic resources to describe new objects and situations. The
potential number of utterances in any human language is infinite. The importance
of productivity has been showed in the recent linguistic literature, especially by
Chomsky, with mostly reference to the problem of accounting for the conquest of
language by children. The fact that children, at their early age, are able to make
utterances that they never heard before is a proof that language is not learned only
by means of stimulation and memorization (Lyons, 1981 : 22)
The communication systems of other creatures don’t have this flexibility. They
have a limited set of signals to choose from (fixed reference). Each signal in the
system is fixed as relating to a particular object or occasion. They cannot produce
any new signals to describe novel experiences. The worker bee example (p. 11)
4. Cultural Transmission
Humans inherit physical features from their parents but not language. o We acquire
a language in a culture with other speakers (not from parental genes) Cultural
transmission The process whereby a language is passed on from one generation to
the next. o We are born with a predisposition to acquire language (but not with the
ability to produce utterances in a specific language) o We acquire our 1 st language
as children in a culture.
Animal are born with a set of specific signals that are produced instinctively. 
Human infants, growing up in isolation, produce no ‘instinctive’ language.  So,
cultural transmission of a specific language is crucial in the human language
acquisition process

5. Discreteness
The sounds used in language are meaningfully distinct. For example, the difference
between a /b/ sound and a /p/ sound is not actually very great, but when these
sounds are part of a language like English, they are used in such a way that the
occurrence of one rather than the other is meaningful. That fact that a language
has a small set of discrete sounds (usually between 20 and 50 or so) that can be
recombined to produce thousands upon thousands of words.
The fact that the pronunciation of the forms pack and back leads to a distinction in
meaning can only be due to the difference between the /p/ and /b/ sounds in
English .This property of language is described as discreteness. Each sound in the
language is treated as discrete.
Another example: the two words 'bit' and 'bet' differ in form, in both the written
and the spoken language. It is widely possible to produce a vowel-sound that is
half-away between the vowels that normally occur in the pronunciation of these
two words. But if one substitutes this intermediate sound for the vowel of 'bit' or
'bet' in the same context, one shall not that way have pronounced some third words
different from either or sharing the characteristics of both. One shall have
pronounce something that is not recognized as a word at all or, instead of that,
something that is identified as a mispronounced version of one or the other.
Though discreteness is not logically dependent upon arbitrariness, it interacts with
it to increase the flexibility and efficiency of language-system. For example, it
would be possible in principle for two words differing minimum, but discretely, in
form to be very similar in meaning. Generally speaking, this does not happen: The
words 'bet' and 'bit' are no more similar in meaning than are any randomly selected
pairs of English words (Lyons, 1981: 20)
6. Duality
In speech production: At a physical level, individual discrete sounds (e.g. g, d, &
o) mean nothing separately. At another level, they take on meaning only when
they are combined together in various ways (e.g. god/ dog) Human language is
organized at 2 levels or layers simultaneously: At one level - distinct sounds; At
another level - distinct meanings. Duality is one of the most economical features of
human language (with a limited set of discrete sounds, we are capable of producing
a very large number of sound combinations (e.g. words)
In other words, at one level of language there are discrete sounds, and at another,
there are discrete meanings. You can combine the letters g, o and d in two different
ways: god and dog, and those two words mean different things/sound differently
even though they are comprised of the same three sound
7. Variability
Variability deals with diversity in sound and frequencies, and is indexical to signal
social identities, e.g. social status, geographical, ethnicity, and even gender. It
means that by the variety of language, people let the world know who they are. The
language that people use varies depending on who is speaking and the situation in
which they are speaking. Language variability allows people to communicate far
more than the semantic content of the sentences and words they utter. After saying
just a few words, people reveal their geographical and social status origins. To
signal membership, people also use their variety of language in a range of
overlapping social groups as male or female, as a teenage or an adult, as a member
of a particular ethnic group. Language variation is also used by people to
communicate the situation and purpose in which they are talking. A priest uses
different language forms through a sermon than through the social hour after a
church service, playing different roles at work. People speak differently to inferiors
than to superiors, and differently through meetings than in coffee breaks. Parents
speak to their children and even to other people's children in a different way to
adults. The language which is used in writing is different from that used in
speaking, reflecting and communicating the different conditions under which
language is produced and its various purposes. Through the medium of language
variation a large number of a speech community's culture is dealt with, Norms of
appropriate language use help speakers to construct and negotiate relations to each
other. The rules that applied unconsciously and unwritten for the different forms
and uses of language can vary from one culture milieu to another, within and
between societies, and even between genders. This raises the risk of
misunderstanding when speakers are behaving unknowingly according to different
culture norms, but enriches one’s ways of seeing the word when those differences
are understood. (Fasold, Connor-Linton, 2006: 6-7).