What is language?

Design features of human language.

The functions of language.
Lecture 2

Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 1

 Which of these are communication/speech/language?

Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 2

 What is language?
• What is a screwdriver?
1. Function 2. Structure/form
• What is L? ‘what people use for sharing
information’
– Function rather than what it is (form & structure)
– What properties does a language have?
• Why bother?
– Linguists must define the object of their interest
– Appreciate how omnipresent and significant language
is in human society
Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 3
 (selected) ‘Design features’ of language
• Mode [oral – free hands, signing – free breathing, …] communication
• Semanticity [necessary meaningfulness] in general

• Cultural transmission [not all innate]

• Arbitrariness
• Discreteness
• Duality of patterning
• Productivity human L
in particular
• Displacement
Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 4
 Arbitrariness
• sound (form)  meaning
– The particular form chosen arbitrarily to represent the given meaning,
one does not determine the other
– [po]  Fr ‘pot’, Fr ‘skin’, Cz ‘after’
• Exceptions
– Onomatopoeic words
• [mu:] En, Ger, Spa, Hebr, Gr, [mø:] Fr, [bu:] Cz
• Still, no guarantee: Cz hepčí(k), En atishoo/achoo, Tagalog bahíng
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linguistic_onomatopoeias

– ‘sound symbolism’
• Dáran x Číkuč
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect
• https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12659
• cheep, teeny weeny, squeak; large, roar
• μικρός ‘small’, μακρός ‘away’
– Reduplication
• Swahili: piga 'to strike'; pigapiga 'to strike repeatedly‘
Jan 6, 2024• Russian: чуть-чуть <few-few> ‘very- Lecture
IntroLing few’ 2 5
 Duality of patterns.
Discreteness.
• Level 1: the speech sounds
– A finite set: 10 (Pirahã) – 120+? (Zhuǀʼhõasi)
• Level 2: their combinations
– We combine them in a potentially infinite number of
ways
• Each sound is distinct from another
– [f] ≠ [iː] ≠ [l]
– [ɛ] ≠ [æ]
– Czech: [a] ≠ [aː]
• And each combination too
– [f+iː+l] ≠ [l+iː+f] ≠ [f+l+iː] ≠ …

Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 6

 Productivity
1. We combine speech sounds in a potentially infinite
number of ways
• We can invent new words

2. With a limited set of sounds and a limited set of their

combinations we are granted the ability to produce
and understand any
number of novel sentences
no one ever said before
• My green horse was reading
in the garage.
Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 7
 Displacement
• We can talk about things, ideas, actions which are not here
and now,
– The guy from upstairs is an idiot.
– I’ll buy your book when it comes out.
• Don’t concern us
– If I were in your shoes I would quit.
• Or don’t even exist
– Her fairy godmother waved her wand and… whoosh! The
pumpkin disappeared, and in its place stood a beautiful gold
coach.
• Consequence: people can share knowledge and experience
– Don’t stick a screwdriver in a power outlet.
= a function of language
•Jan 6,compare
2024 with animal communication
IntroLing - Lecture 2 8
Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 9
http://my.mail.ru/video/bk/atong/756/759.html (jump to 50:30)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dhc2zePJFE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKauXrp9dl4

• Animal communication meets some of the criteria given

above but not all at the same time (as far as we know)

Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 10

Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 11
 (selected) ‘Design features’ of language
• Mode [oral – free hands, signing – free breathing, …] communication
• Semanticity [necessary meaningfulness] in general

• Cultural transmission [not all innate]

• Arbitrariness
• Discreteness and duality
• Productivity human L
in particular
• Displacement
What would human L be like without each of these features?
Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 12
• https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/style/
bunny-the-dog-animal-communication.html

Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 13

 Defining L
• ‘the institution [empty word] whereby humans
communicate [function 1] and interact with each
other [function 1 or 2?] by means of [now it comes?]
habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols’
– Captures:
• Functions, mental lexicon, features (mode, transmission,
arbitrariness)
– Lacks:
• Mental grammar, other design features

Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 14

 Defining L
• ‘an infinite set of sentences [actual as well as
potential sentences], each finite in length and
constructed out of a finite set of elements’
– Captures
• Discreetness and duality, productivity
– Lacks
• Anything else

Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 15

 Defining L
• ‘the words, their pronunciation, and the
methods of combining them used and
understood by a considerable community and
established by long usage’
– Short and simple
– Mental lexicon, mental grammar, production and
perception

Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 16

 Note
• Linguistics is interested in natural languages
(French, Farsi, American Sign Language, …)

• Not really in formal languages (math, logic,

programming)
• Or artificial languages (Esperanto)

Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 17

 Functions of language
Match with examples

1. Informative A. No way, seriously?

2. Social B. That’s great news!
3. Directive C. Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes
4. Cognitive D. Could you call Molly?
5. Expressive E. For about two hours.
6. Esthetic F. Where the heck have I left it?

Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 18

 Functions of L – why do people use L?

1. Sharing knowledge
– giving information and asking for it
– Exchanging facts and ideas, learning from each
other
• Which design features of human L allow this?
– Displacement, productivity
• People can be useful to each other

Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 19

T: Hey, Chris!
C: Oh, Terry, hi!
T: How’s it going, man?
C: Fine, thanks.
T: Haven’t seen you for ages!
C: Yeah, it’s been a while, hasn’t it.
T: So how’s life?
C: Oh, you know… a married man. (laughs) How about you?
T: I’m doing good, yeah…
C: That’s great. (pause) Sorry, I gotta run. Say hi to Anna from
me!
T: Ok, I will. See you.
C: See you.
No factual content involved
Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 20
 Functions of L – why do people use L?

2. Maintaining social relationships ( ~ “phatic” function)

– Your social roles
• daughter, sister, best friend, acquaintance, student,
classmate, roommate, girlfriend, colleague, wife,
mother, …
• How do you become and stay ‘best friend’?
– Soooo much of it done by means of talking

• It’s often rude to say nothing

– ‘Small talk’

Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 21

Pardo et al. (2012). Phonetic convergence in college
roommates. Journal of Phonetics 40, 190-197.
– Five pairs of previously unacquainted male roommates were
recorded at four time intervals during the academic year.
– Their accents and their perception of speech sounds became
more and more similar
• Consequence:
– Easy to identify those who speak like you (even if
you don’t know them) and treat them as ‘your folks’
• A way of preserving and displaying your identity

Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 22

 Functions of L – why do people use L?
Last week’s volunteer: You can ‘do magic’ with language
(= manipulate with the world without physically doing it
yourself)
3. Persuading and achieving cooperation
(“conative” function)
– Influencing the behavior of others
• directives, commands, requests, and more subtle ways –
questions (why don’t you…), suggestions, …
• Rhetorics, political speechmaking
– 'You can fool all the people all of the time if the advertising is
right and the budget is big enough‘
– Setting up a division of labor
Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 23
 Functions of L – why do people use L?
4. Reasoning (L as the instrument of thought)
‘Language helps humans to establish within their minds representations or models of the worlds in
which they live, and enables them to carry out experiments on those models. Since these experiments
take place in the virtual realities of their minds, humans do not have to suffer their actual, potentially
harmful consequences.’ (Ritt)
‘I wanted to utter a word, but that word I cannot remember
and the bodiless thought will now return to the palace of shadows’
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
‘We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. The categories and types that we
isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in
the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscope flux of impressions which has
to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems of our minds. […]
we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way—an agreement that holds throughout
our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of
course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all
except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees.’
(Whorf 1956)
– Different Ls > different patterns of thought

– Counterarguments
• translation is not impossible
• Not having a word doesn’t mean not being able to grasp a concept
(půjčit – borrow x lend, oženit se x vdát se – get married)
Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 24
– ‘Thinking in a Foreign Language Makes Decisions More Rational’
 Functions of L – why do people use L?

5. Expressing emotions
– Negative – cursing
– Positive – wow, …
• Esthetic feelings about language
– Finding beauty in language
• Jump-rope rhymes
• Rap
• poetry

Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 25

 Overview of (some) basic functions of L

• Interpersonal
– Sharing knowledge
– Maintaining social relationships
– Achieving cooperation
– Expressing emotions
• Intrapersonal
– Reasoning
– Expressing emotions

Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 26

 Next time
• Creation of language 1: The origin of language.
How language may have started and why.
How language is created and maintained by
communities.
• Required reading
– How the Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) emerged
• Suggested further reading
– Aitchison, Seeds of Speech, chapter 1 (9 pages)
– http://my.mail.ru/video/bk/atong/756/759.html (jump to 50:30)

Jan 6, 2024 IntroLing - Lecture 2 27