Language in Summary

Language is a system of conventional symbols by means of which human beings, as members of

a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves. The functions of language
include conception and communication of thought, the expression of identity, imaginative
expression, and emotional release.

Definitions of language

Many definitions of language have been proposed. Henry Sweet, an English language scholar,
stated: “Language is the expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds combined into words.
Words are combined into sentences, this combination answering to that of ideas into thoughts.”
The American linguists Bernard Bloch and George L. Trager formulated the following
definition: “A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group
cooperates.” Most definitions emphasize the idea that language expresses thought, and that the
words or symbols used are arbitrary. By means of these symbols, people are able to impart
information, to express feelings and emotions, to influence the actions of otherswho make use of
the same set of symbols.

No two people speak exactly alike; hence, one is able to recognize the voices of friends over the
telephone and to keep distinct a number of unseen speakers in a radio broadcast. Yet, clearly, no
one would say that they speak different languages. Generally, systems of communication are
recognized as different languages if they cannot be understood without specific learning by both
parties, though the precise limits of mutual intelligibility are hard to draw and belong on a scale
rather than on either side of a definite dividing line. Substantially different systems of
communication that may impede but do not prevent mutual comprehension are called dialects of
a language. The habits of expression of a single person are called idiolects.

Language, as described above, is species-specific to human beings. Other members of the animal
kingdom have the ability to communicate, through vocal noises or by other means, but the most
important single feature characterizing human language is its productivity and creativity. Human
beings are unrestricted in what they can communicate; no area of experience is accepted as
necessarily incommunicable, though it may be necessary to adapt one’s language in order to
cope with new discoveries or new modes of thought.

The primary purpose of language is to facilitate communication, in the sense of transmission of

information from one person to another. However, there are a range of other functions for
language. These include the use of language to express a national or local identity, as well as the
“ludic” (playful) function of language as seen in imaginative or symbolic contexts, such as
poetry, drama and religious expression.

Language interacts with every aspect of human life in society, and it can be understood only if it
is considered in relation to society.But each language is also a working system of communication
in the period and in the community wherein it is used and also the product of its history.
The science of language is known as linguistics. It includes what are generally distinguished as
descriptive linguistics and historical linguistics. Linguistics as a science is divided into major
areas called levels of linguistic description, such as Lexis, Morphology, Syntax, Phonology and
Semantics, and these enable the linguist to break down the various aspects of language into
describable forms.

Origins of language

Several independent traditions ascribe divine or supernatural origin to language. The biblical and
Quranic account of Adam naming the creatures of the earth under God’s guidance is well known:

So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird
of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and
whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. [Genesis 2:19]

And He (God) taught Adam the names (of all things), then He showed them to the
angels and said, "Tell Me the names of these (things) if you are truthful." [Quran
2:31]

There are similar stories of divine participation in the creation of language in several other belief
traditions. The biblical tradition of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9) illustrates three other
aspects of divinity and language: (1) divine interest in and control over its use and development
(2) a recognition of the power it gives to humans in relation to their environment, and (3) an
explanation of linguistic diversity.

Whatever we believe about the origins of language, there is no doubt that it continues to be one
of the wonders of humanity.

Functions of language

It is difficult to imagine human life without the use of language. Naming various aspects of the
world is one the most important functions of human language. By use of language, we are able to
identify and signify fellow human beings, animals, and other objects around us. In many
cultures, the ability to name is also a means to control or possession. In some cultures, there are
taboos associated with names, while in others the naming of certain things is considered obscene,
blasphemous, or very fearful. Which is ever the case, the naming function is a vital aspect of our
existence.

The other important function of language is that of storing and communicating thought. We
use language to generate thoughts, and to transmit them from one human being to another, from
one group to another, and from one generation to another. The intimate connection between
language and thought leads to a recognition of the fact that different languages determine
different ways of understanding and thinking about the world. All people inhabit a broadly
similar world; this enables the translation of thought from one language to another. But human
beings do not understand the world in the same way. This often creates difficulties in translation,
especially because different understandings of science, law, morals, social structure are involved.

Human Language and the Brain

Language acquisition is one of the most significant characteristics of the human being. Children
learn the language of those who bring them up from infancy. These are often the biological
parents, but one’s first language is acquired from environment and learning, not from
physiological inheritance. Adopted infants, whatever their physical characteristics and whatever
the language of their biological parents, acquire the language of the adoptive parents.

During the process of language acquisition, the human brain stores linguistic information, and
also adapts it to the grammatical regularities of a particular language. When babies are born, they
cannot talk or understand words. They are not born with speech or language. This is something
they learn from their interaction with others. Within the first year of life, babies say their first
words, and they can soon speak full sentences. After only 2–3 years, babies are already quite
good at verbal communication and are able to say what they want. This fast progress in language
abilities is supported by in-born conditions within the brain that support language learning.

Certain parts of the brain are responsible for the baby’s recognition of words and sentences.
These brain areas are mainly located in two regions in the left side of the brain, and are
connected by nerves. Together, these brain regions and their connections form a network that
provides the hardware for language in the brain. Without this brain network, we would not be
able to talk or to understand what is being said. It follows that when these parts of the brain are
damaged, a person will not be able to speak or understand what is spoken to them.

Ways of studying language

Languages are very complicated structures. One realizes how complicated language is when one
tries to learn a second language as an adult. If one tries to learn a new by memorizing all the
rules of a language, one will soon give it up as an impossible task. But at all levels of language
use, one is aware of the existence of rules in language. These are the rules that enable a native
user to produce and understand an infinite number of correct well-formed sentences. By
understanding this process, one can easily appreciate the complexity of the knowledge that a
child acquires while mastering a native language, whether that language is English, Swahili, or
Hindu.

Levels of Linguistic Description

Languages can be described from different points of view, or at different levels, each
contributing something essential and unique to a full understanding of the subject. Linguists have
identified five general levels of Linguistic description that make it generally easy to do this.

Lexis
We have already seen a definition of language that refers to it as “a system of arbitrary vocal
symbols by means of which a social group cooperates.” This means that the most conspicuous
aspect of language is speech, the use of words by human beings to talk to each other. In order for
any language to function, it must have words, which the members of a particular group use to
signal meaning to each other. There are two terms whose meanings are related, but which must
be explained: Lexis and Vocabulary. Lexis is the group of all words in a particular language, and
vocabulary refers to the set of words used by a person, a regional or national group, or by a
specific industry.

Morphology

Morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies word structures, especially in terms of
morphemes, which are the smallest units of language. They can be base words or components
that form words, such as affixes. The adjective form is morphological.

The term 'morphology' is taken over from biology where it is used to denote the study of the
forms of plants and animals. There are two branches of morphology: inflectional morphology,
which study the way simple morphemes are used to modify words for purposes indicating verb
forb forms in their different tenses, nouns in their different numbers, and adjectives in their
different comparative forms. The second type of morphology is Derivational morphology, also
called Lexical word formation or lexical morphology, deals with the construction of new base
words, especially complex ones that come from multiple morphemes.

Syntax and Grammar

There is more to language than words and sounds. Very generally, grammar is concerned with
the relations between words in sentences. Classes of words, or parts of speech, as they are often
called, are distinguished because they occupy different places in sentence structure, and in most
languages some of them appear in different forms according to their function.

Traditionally, grammar has is divided into syntax and morphology, with syntax dealing with the
relations between words in sentence structure and morphology with the internal construction of
words. The relation between girl and girls is part of morphology; but in the structure the girl is
here, the position of each word is part of syntax.

Phonology

All features of language study relating to the use of speech sounds in particular languages fall
under the general heading of phonology, which may be defined as the sound system of a
language. But for purposes of analysis, the subject of phonology broadly divides into two parts:
Phonetics and phonology.

Phonetics deals with the aspect of language study loosely referred to as pronunciation. What is
distinctive in one language may not be distinctive in another or may be used in a different way.
A Phoneme, in linguistics, is the smallest unit of speech distinguishing one word from another,
as the element p in “tap,” which separates that word from “tab,” “tag,” and “tan.” Phonemes are
based on spoken language and may be recorded with special symbols, such as those of the
International Phonetic Alphabet. In transcription, linguists conventionally place symbols for
phonemes between slash marks: /p/.

The different sounds of language are produced at specific points in the articulatory system, as
shown in the articulatory apparatus below:

The phonemes are of two types: consonants and vowels. The chart below shows the places and
manner of articulation for the consonants of the English language.
Cardinal vowels are a set of reference vowels used by phoneticians in describing the sounds of
languages. For instance, the vowel of the English word "feet" can be described with reference to
cardinal vowel [i], which is the cardinal vowel closest to it.

Vowels are continuous sounds. The air stream expelled from the lungs acquires a distinct quality,
but at no point does it meet any obstruction. The tongue is the crucial factor in creating
resonance chambers. It can move from a state of total passivity to the highest point in the mouth
close to its roof.

This highly flexible organ is capable of positioning itself to various degrees of height. It is in the
nature of vowels that they are voiced. What differentiates them is the way the tongue and the lips
shape the channel through which the air passes after leaving the larynx. As we see in the word,
‘least’ tongue is raised, lips are spread and in the word ‘loose’ tongue raised at the back, lips are
rounded and in the word ‘last’ tongue is low, lips, lips are somewhat rounded. Vowels that are
produced when the tongue is high are called Close Vowels, when the tongue is low are called
Open Vowels. When the tongue is pushed forward, they are Front Vowels and when pushed
backwards are called Back Vowels. When vowels join with other vowels, they become
diphthongs because they glide from one vowel sound to the other as ‘O’ in the word ‘go’ is a
diphthong. Peter McCarthy states:

“A pure vowel is one for which the organs of speech remain in a given position for a time. A
Diphthong is a vowel sound consisting of a deliberate and intentional glide”

A British Linguist, Daniel Jones proposed a set of reference points known as Cardinal Vowels
Chart. There are eight Primary Cardinal Vowels. The cardinal vowels are an abstract yardstick to
be used by the linguist. You can see in the graph Cardinal vowels representing tongue positions.
The first Cardinal Vowel is usually referred to as C1 and represented by /i/ and so on. Vowels
can be described in three variables. Tongue Height (low-high), Tongue Advancement (which
part of the tongue is used so we have: Front, Central and Back or also Close, Half Close and
Open) and Lip Rounding. English has twelve vowel sounds. In the cardinal chart, you can see
seven short and five long vowels. An alternative way of organizing them is whether they are
short or long.

Front Vowels: /i:/ – cream, seen (long high front spread vowel) /i/ – bit, silly (short high front
spread vowel) /e/ – bet, head (short mid front spread vowel) /æ/ – cat, dad (short low front spread
vowel).
Central Vowels: /E:/- burn, firm (long mid central spread vowel) /J/ – about, clever (short mid
central spread vowel); this is called schwa. /^/ – cut, nut (Short low front spread vowel).
Back Vowels: /u:/ – boot, glue (long hight back rounded vowel). /ˆ/ – put, soot (short high back
rounded vowel). /¿ – corn, born (long mid back rounded vowel) // – dog, rotten (short
low back rounded vowel) /a:/ – hard, far (long low back spread vowel)

Diphthongs: We can analyse a diphthong or a triphthong as two or three vowels respectively

but they are considered a single unit. There are two types of Falling and Rising. In the Falling
Diphthong, the first element is more prominent. In the Rising Diphthongs, the second element is
more prominent. English Diphthongs are mostly falling ones. Another classification is Centering
if the second element is released as the central vowel. The tongue moves to the central position
for the second element as in /iJ, ˆJ/ and Decentering or Closing if it moves to a less central
position as in /aˆ, ai etc./. In short, a vowel that does not change in quality is called a
Monophthong and one that changes is a Diphthong. The diphthongs have been marked in the
cardinal reference chart.

The centering diphthongs are: /iJ/, /ˆJ/, /eJ/ as in dear, poor and care respectively.
The closing diphthongs are: /ei/, /¿i/, /Jˆ/, /ai/, /a/ as in page, boy, show, high, cow respectively.

Semantics

Languages exist in their present forms in order to meet the communication needs of human
communities. In order to do this, acts of communication have to make meaning. The study of
meaning, both in general theoretical terms and in reference to a specific language, is known as
semantics. Semantics embraces the meaningful functions of individual words, of phonological
features, such as intonation, and of grammatical structures. The lexicon particularly forms a
substantial component of the subject matter of semantics. The English language has a total of
about one and a half million words, and these are to construct an infinite number of sentences,
usable in many contexts.

Lexical meaning (lexical Semantics)

Every language has a vocabulary of many thousands of words, though not all are in active use,
and some are known only to relatively few speakers. Languages in part create the world in which
humans live. Of course, many words do name existing bits and pieces of earth and heaven: stone,
tree, dog, woman, star, cloud, and so on. Others, however, classify it and organize one’s
relations with it and with each other with regard to it. A range of living creatures are mammals or
are vertebrates, because people classify them in these ways. Plants are vegetables or weeds
according to the way groups of people classify them.

Time and its associated vocabulary (year, month, day, hour, minute, yesterday, tomorrow, and so
on) do not refer to discrete sections of reality but enable people to impose some sort of order, in
agreement with others, on the processes of change observed in the world. Personal pronouns pick
out the persons speaking, spoken to, and spoken about; but the use of pronouns varies widely
from one language to another.

Other word meanings are even more language- and culture-bound and, in consequence, harder to
translate. Right and wrong, theft, inheritance, property, debt, sin, and crime are just a few of the
words regulating one’s conduct and relations with one’s fellows in a particular culture.

While all languages have onomatopoeic words, the great majority of word shapes bear no direct
relation to their lexical meanings. Onomatopoeic words account for a very small part of the
vocabulary of any language. For the largest number of words in a spoken language, there is no
direct association between sound and meaning. Vocabulary has to be largely arbitrary, because
the greater part of the world and of human experience is not directly associated with any kind of
noise, or even with specific gestures or hand shapes.
Word meanings are different in different languages; and they are not fixed for all time in any one
language. Semantic changes take place all along, and at any moment the semantic area covered
by a word differs from context to context.

The relationships between words:

Semantics also looks at the ways in which the meanings of words can be related to each other.
Here are a few of the ways in which words can be semantically related:

 Synonymy – Words are synonymous/ synonyms when they can be used to mean the same
thing (at least in some contexts – words are rarely fully identical in all contexts). Begin
and start, Big and large, Youth and adolescent.
 Antonymy Words are antonyms of one another when they have opposite meanings
(again, at least in some contexts). Big and small,
Come and go, Up and down.
 Polysemy – A word is polysemous when it has two or more related meanings. In this case
the word takes one form but can be used to mean two different things. In the case of
polysemy, these two meanings must be related in some way, and not be two completely
unrelated meanings of the word. Bright (shining) and bright (intelligent). Mouse (animal)
and mouse (computer hardware).
 Homophony – Homophony is similar to polysemy in that it refers to a single form of
word with two meanings, however a word is a homophone when the two meanings are
entirely unrelated. Bat (flying mammal) and bat (sports equipment). Pen (writing
instrument) and pen (small cage).

The relationships between sentences (Sentential Semantics):

Sentences can also be semantically related to one-another in a few different ways.

 Paraphrase – Paraphrases have the same truth conditions; if one is true, the other must
also be true. ‘The boys like the girls’ and ‘the girls are liked by the boys’, ‘John gave the
book to Chris’ and ‘John gave Chris the book’.
 Mutual entailment – Each sentence must be true for the other to be true. ‘John is married
to Rachel’ and ‘Rachel is John’s wife’,
‘Chris is a man’ and ‘Chris is human’.
 Asymmetrical entailment – Only one of the sentences must be true for the other to be
true, but that sentence may be true without the other sentence necessarily having to be
true. ‘Rachel is John’s wife’ entails ‘John is married’ (but John is married does not entail
Rachel being his wife), ‘Rachel has two brothers’ entails ‘Rachel is not an only child’
(but Rachel not being an only child does not entail Rachel having two brothers).
 Contradiction – Sentences contradict each other when one sentence is true and the other
cannot be true. ‘Rachel is an only child’ and ‘Rachel’s brother is called Phil’, ‘Alex is
alive’ and ‘Alex died last week’.

Ambiguity:
One of the aspects of how meaning works in language is ambiguity. A sentence is ambiguous
when it has two or more possible meanings, but how does ambiguity arise in language? A
sentence can be ambiguous for either of the following reasons:

Lexical Ambiguity: A sentence is lexically ambiguous when it can have two or more possible
meanings due to polysemous (words that have two or more related meanings) or homophonous
(a single word which has two or more different meanings) words.
Example of lexically ambiguous sentence: Prostitutes appeal to the Pope. This sentence is
ambiguous because the word ‘appeal’ is polysemous and can mean ‘ask for help’ or ‘are
attractive to’.

Structural Ambiguity: A sentence is structurally ambiguous if it can have two or more possible
meanings due to the words it contains being able to be combined in different ways which create
different meanings.

Example of structurally ambiguous sentence: Enraged cow injures farmer with axe. In this
sentence the ambiguity arises from the fact that the ‘with axe’ can either refer to the farmer, or to
the act of injuring being carried out (by the cow) ‘with axe’.

Semantics in the field of Linguistics

Semantics looks at these relationships in language and looks at how these meanings are created,
which is an important part of understanding how language works as a whole. Understanding how
meaning occurs in language can inform other sub-disciplines, such as Language Acquisition, to
help us to understand how speakers acquire a sense of meaning, and Sociolinguistics, as the
achievement of meaning in language is important in language in a social situation.
Semantics is also informed by other sub-disciplines of linguistics, such as Morphology, as
understanding the words themselves is integral to the study of their meaning, and Syntax, which
researchers in semantics use extensively to reveal how meaning is created in language, as how
language is structured is central to meaning.

Language and culture

Language is transmitted culturally. Likewise, culture as a whole is transmitted through language.

The fact that humankind has a history in the sense that animals do not is entirely the result of
language.

Language and Literature

Language and literature are two intertwined concepts that are essential to human expression and
communication. Literature is an art form that utilizes language to express thoughts, emotions,
and ideas in a beautiful and meaningful way. Without language, literature would not exist, as it is
the foundation upon which all literary works are built.

Literature is not just about conveying information or ideas, but also about capturing the essence
of human experiences, exploring the depths of our emotions, and reflecting the social and
cultural contexts of the time in which it was created.
Literature, in turn, enriches language by continually pushing the boundaries of what can be
expressed through written or spoken words, and by introducing new words and expressions to
our vocabulary.

In essence, language and literature are two sides of the same coin, working together to enrich our
understanding of the world around us and our ability to express ourselves. Whether we are
reading a novel, listening to a poem, or engaging in a conversation, we are constantly utilizing
language and drawing on the rich history and evolution of literature to make meaning of our
experiences.

The study of lexis, morphology, syntax, phonology and semantics all play a role in the
communication of the literary text.