Understanding Human Language: Origins, Structure, and Theories
Unit 2: Language
1. The Concept of Language
Ferdinand de Saussure defined language as “a system of arbitrary signs” and believed that it comprises two factors: langue (language system) and parole (speech). He emphasized that language is a social fact, in contrast to speech, which is an individual phenomenon. This dual conception of language, as a system of signs and as a social institution, led Saussure to propose semiotics, a science that studies the life of signs within social life. Sign systems play a crucial role in society: communication between humans.
Edward Sapir, one of the creators of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, posited that there is a relationship between the grammatical categories of a language and the way its speakers understand the world. Two speakers of very different languages may conceptualize the same phenomena somewhat differently, with cognitive effects associated with the specific vocabulary and grammar of their languages. According to E. Sapir, “Language is a uniquely human, non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols. These symbols are, in the first instance, auditory and are produced by the so-called ‘organs of speech’.”
André Martinet, a representative of functionalism, relied on the idea that language’s role as a communication tool is essential. He also understood that the study of a language state, independent of its history, has explanatory value and is not just descriptive.
2. Type, System, Norm, and Speech
These concepts are developments of Saussure’s ideas. Speech corresponds almost exactly to Saussure’s concept of parole, while the concepts of system and norm are developments of Saussurean langue. In Saussure’s view, langue includes everything that is social in language—everything that somehow belongs to the community that speaks the language.
Eugenio Coseriu introduced the concept of norm, which he defined as the accepted implementation of the language within a speech community. In other words, within the language system, there exists the possibility of creating many forms, but the norm encompasses those forms that have been realized within the community and therefore belong to the community that uses the language.
3. The Faculty of Language
3.1. Cartesian Linguistics
The use of the word faculty is connected to its meaning in philosophy. Aristotle believed that faculty and act are notions that apply mainly to understanding the passage of entities from a less formed state to a more formed state. Thus, these concepts highlight “dynamic” elements. From a philosophical standpoint, one could say that language and speech are the act that corresponds to the faculty of language.
Noam Chomsky states that the linguistics proposed by Descartes conceives language as a natural property of the human mind. Assuming that human beings have faculties that cannot be explained mechanically, it is language that most clearly expresses the difference between animal behavior and human behavior. Humans use language primarily as a vehicle for thought and self-knowledge, and only secondarily for social communication. This is the fundamental contribution of the language that develops from Cartesian philosophy: considering language as a medium of thought and self-expression rather than as a communication medium similar to that of animals. Humans are continuously emitting and understanding sentences that they have never said or heard before. According to Noam Chomsky, the main reason for studying language is the possibility it offers to clarify the intrinsic properties of the human mind, given the close relationship between language and understanding. This faculty gives each person the possibility of creating a grammar for their language: a finite mechanism capable of generating an unlimited number of phrases.
3.2. The Concepts of Competence and Performance
Noam Chomsky calls competence the implicit knowledge that a speaker-listener has of their language’s grammar. Chomsky’s concept of competence is very different from Saussure’s langue: competence is individual, whereas langue is social. It should be related to another linguistic term: idiolect, which is the individual part of the language belonging to the community, but of which each speaker partakes. There are differences between idiolect and competence: the concept of language, to which idiolect belongs, is static and does not express the creative use of language that the concept of competence does.
Noam Chomsky speaks of two kinds of competence: Pragmatic competence is the speakers’ knowledge of the relationship between language and the context encoded in the structure of a language. This context includes the identity of the participants in the conversation, as well as spatial and temporal factors. Grammatical competence includes various types of language ability: syntactic, semantic, phonological, etc.
The term performance, as opposed to competence, refers to the actual use of language in specific situations and is therefore close to Saussure’s concept of parole. In performance, individual external factors such as memory, attention, emotion, etc., may result in some distortion of the message: hesitation, linguistic errors, false starts, etc.
3.3. The Concepts of Internal and External Language
Saussure defined language as a “system of sounds and signs.” Chomsky believes that these definitions refer to a concept of “externalized” language (E-language), a language conceived as something outside the speaker’s mind. From this, one can say that a grammar is a collection of descriptive statements regarding E-language. As a concept of language, Noam Chomsky suggests the term “internalized” language (I-language). I-language is an element of the mind of the person who knows the language; it is the grammar that the speaker-listener has constructed from universal grammar. Universal grammar is constructed as the theory of human I-languages, identifying the I-languages that are humanly accessible under normal conditions. Chomsky considers that the concept of E-language adds nothing and is completely displaced by I-language, a concept that has replaced that of grammatical competence in recent years.
3.4. Differences in the View of Language
The crux of the difference lies in the fundamental goal of language: communication or the structuring of thought. Communication emphasizes the social and symbolic aspects of language, whereas the structuring of thought emphasizes the mechanism based on rules and principles.
4. Origins of Language
4.1. Monogenesis
This position maintains that all current languages originate from a single, initial language. This is the position held by the Bible, where language is one of the attributes of God’s power. God carries out creation with the power of his word. What makes human beings like God is the word, that is, wisdom. The Bible also provides an example to explain the diversity of today’s languages: the episode of the Tower of Babel. There are also stories of separating children to determine who speaks first and how (assuming they both spoke the same language).
4.3. Nature or Convention in Language
For naturalists, there was a natural connection between the forms of a language and the essence of things; Plato defended this view. Is language a human biological heritage that we receive with our genes, or is it a human invention that must be learned? From a dual perspective, Descartes maintains a rationalist stance and believes in innate mechanisms that are at the origin of knowledge. He takes up Plato’s rationalist argument that language is a property of the mind and therefore natural. The empiricist position, represented by Locke, argues that all human knowledge comes from experience, especially through the senses. Rousseau believed that language is a human invention. In modern times, these theories are supported by psychologists and linguists of behavioral trends.
4.4. The Evolutionary Position
Upright posture and the need for group cooperation in hunting and food gathering were factors that led to human evolution. With the enlargement of the skull and brain growth, the head and internal organs changed. All of this, along with the development of erect posture, made possible a structurally different human vocal apparatus. Miller believed that all present languages probably derive from a single source, a language that likely began to be spoken in Central Africa. However, it is truly impossible to know this with certainty given the data we have today.