Human Language: Definition, Characteristics, and Processes
Language: Definition and Analysis of the Psychological Process
Language (Provençal lenguatgea) refers to any type of structured semiotic code for which there is a context of use and certain formal combinational principles. There are both natural and artificial contexts.
Human Language
Human language is based on the ability of humans to communicate through signs. Mainly, we use sign language. However, there are different types of language. Human language can be studied in terms of development from two complementary perspectives: ontogeny, which refers to the process of language acquisition by human beings, and phylogeny.
Animal Language
Animal language is based on the use of audible, visual, and olfactory signals as signs to point to a referent or a different meaning of these signals. Within animal language are the cries of alarm, the language of bees, etc.
Formal Languages
Formal languages are artificial human constructs that are used in formal mathematics and other disciplines, including programming languages. These buildings have internal structures that they share with natural human language, so they can be partly analyzed with the same concepts as this one.
Pre-language, Speech, Language, or Language, Speech, Dialect
Pre-language is a rudimentary communication system shown in the language of babies, and that is the basis for the acquisition of it. It is through and by a set of qualities necessary for the baby to acquire language, and are neurophysiological and psychological capacities among which are perception, motor skills, imitation, and memory.
Language is a highly developed ability or faculty in man. It is a specialized communication system, unlike other animal species, both physiological and psychological, which belongs to both the individual and the social domain, and that enables us to abstract, conceptualize, and communicate. According to Ferdinand de Saussure, in human language structure, we should differentiate between language and speech:
- Language: Also called language, especially for non-linguistic uses. It is a general and consistent model for all members of a linguistic community. Humans create an infinite number of communications from a finite number of elements, for example, through diagrams or concept maps. The representation of this capacity is what is known as language, i.e., the code. A conventional definition of language is that of “linguistic signs that serve members of a community of speakers to communicate.”
- Speech: Momentary materialization or recreation of that model for each member of the linguistic community. It is an individual and voluntary act in which, through acts of speech and writing, the speaker uses language to communicate. The various manifestations of speech make the language evolve.
Dialect refers to a geographical variant of a language (e.g., Dominican Spanish spoken in the Dominican Republic and the Spanish spoken in Madrid). Languages are expressed with distinctive features in each region or social group. These distinctive features could be phonetic, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic.
Characteristics of Natural Languages
The linguist July Mejias speaks of fifteen language-defining features, some of which are present in animal communication and formal languages. However, only natural languages have these fifteen traits of Hockett, and therefore, this list is characterized as a natural language.
Among the most distinctive features are the arbitrary (the relationship between sign and meaning), productivity (which can produce new messages never made), and hierarchical structure (in which human languages have syntactic rules or principles and grammar, so that the productions are not random).
Different Definitions
There is a wealth of definitions of what human language is, depending on each author in each era and in every circumstance. A selection of some of the definitions given to language:
- A language is understood as a system of codes designated with the help of the outside world objects, actions, qualities, and relations between them. (A. R. Luria, 1977).
- Language is a manipulative habit (J. B. Watson, 1924).
- Language is a finite or infinite set of sentences, each of which has a finite extent and is built from a finite set of elements (Noam Chomsky, 1957).
- Language is an instance or faculty that is invoked to explain that all men talk to each other (J. P. Bornchart, 1957).
Human Language
Human language is due to evolutionary adaptations that occur exclusively in humans of the species Homo sapiens. Linguistic behavior in humans is of an instinctive type but must be acquired through contact with other human beings. The structure of natural languages, which are the concrete result of the human capacity to develop language, can communicate ideas and emotions through a system of articulate sounds, line-written and/or symbols, through which the relationship and understanding between individuals are made possible. Human language allows the expression of thought and externalization of the wishes and feelings. The human capacity for language, as reflected in natural language, is studied by linguistics. It is believed that the progression goes from natural language to speech, and then to writing, and eventually an understanding and explanation of grammar are installed. From the standpoint of social and historical human language, it has resulted in languages that live, die, move from one place to another, and change over time. Any language that lets you change or develop is categorized as a dead language. On the contrary, any language not being a dead language, and becoming part of modern languages or modern, is constantly undergoing adjustments that cumulatively are responsible for the so-called linguistic change.
Making a distinction in principle between one language and another is usually impossible. For example, some German dialects are similar to some dialects of the Netherlands. The transition between languages within the same language family is sometimes gradual (see dialect continuum).
Some people make a parallel with biology, where it is impossible to make a sharp distinction between one species and the next. In any case, the real challenge may be the result of interaction between languages and populations. (See Dialect or August Schleicher). The concepts of Ausbausprache, Dachsprache, and Abstandsprache are used to make finer distinctions about the degrees of difference between languages or dialects.
Understanding the Psychological Processes in Language
Speech activity is based on three types of processes:
1. Cognitive and Motivational Processes: They are not exclusive or specific to linguistic activity. These horizontal processes or mental faculties are not yet strictly language. For the process to be effective, communication must use combinations of signs that can be deciphered and interpreted properly by their partners. This leads to the second process.
2. Linguistic and Grammatical Processes: To communicate what we want, we do not use random series of words, but we build meaningful sentences and grammatically acceptable ones. So, in the speech production process, as important as pointing out the involvement of so-called horizontal mental faculties, it will analyze how the subjects encode and produce their message, apply a very specific type of knowledge (knowledge of the grammar of a language), and what are the computational operations required for the treatment of grammatical information during encoding or processing of such messages. The above processes (cognitive and grammar) may be necessary but not sufficient to characterize verbal production. The subject speaks for something: to inform, ponder, ask, or to contact others, which would yield the following process:
3. Processes and Instrumental Communication: Speech activity is both a cognitive and linguistic process, an instrumental activity, and social interaction. People often speak in interactive contexts to produce hundreds of effects on their partners, to build and emit linguistic forms considered most effective in each case, i.e., depending on what the communicative context is, who the interlocutor is, and what the motive or purpose of the conversation is, the subjects apply one style or another language and use language or other shapes. Therefore, the production of language should be interpreted as a communicative process with social consequences.