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Introduction to Communication

The document outlines the unique properties of human language, distinguishing it from animal communication. Key features include intentional communication, displacement in time and space, arbitrariness of linguistic forms, productivity of utterances, cultural transmission, and duality of sound organization. These properties highlight the complexity and adaptability of human language compared to the limited signaling of animals.

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11 views

Introduction to Communication

The document outlines the unique properties of human language, distinguishing it from animal communication. Key features include intentional communication, displacement in time and space, arbitrariness of linguistic forms, productivity of utterances, cultural transmission, and duality of sound organization. These properties highlight the complexity and adaptability of human language compared to the limited signaling of animals.

Uploaded by

devilstalk89
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Handout 1

The Properties of Language

1. Communicative versus Informative:

Language is unique to human beings. No animal can make use of a language. A human being is
able to communicate to other human beings. We may distinguish between communicative and
informative signals. A person listening to you may become informed about you via a number of
signals which you have not intentionally sent. He may note that you have a cold because you
sneezed. He may also note that you speak a different language because he does not understand
your language. He may also notice that you are untidy because your clothes are dirty. These things
give you some information about the person. But the person has used no language. These are called
informative signals. You got the information about the person without his speaking to you or any
other person. However, when you use language to tell a person, “ I will give you the book
tomorrow”, you intentionally communicate to the other person. This is called intentional
communication. Animals cannot intentionally communicate to other animals of their own species
(kind).

2. Displacement:

Human language has the property of displacement in time and space. This simply means that we
can talk about things that happened a long time ago or things that happened in another city. For
example, you might have bought a car last year. Even today you can tell your friend about it
although you bought the car a year ago. Similarly, you can talk about something that happened in
London or Riyadh either today or two years ago. Animal communication lacks this property.
Animals can only react to things in their immediate environment. For example, a cat or a dog
cannot communicate about something that happened to it yesterday.
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3. Arbitrariness:

There is no natural connection between the linguistic form and its meaning. For example, let us
take the word ‘cat’. We know that the word ‘cat’ in English refers to an animal that we find every
day. However, it is called ‘bili’ in Hindi and similarly it has different words in other languages. It
is just a historical accident that a cat is called a ‘cat’ in English. Similarly, why we call a chair
‘chair’ in English is totally an arbitrary matter. If there was a natural relationship between the
linguistics form and meaning of a word, there would be only one word for an object in all the
languages.

There are. Of course, some words in language which have sounds which seem to ‘echo’ sounds of
objects or activities. Some of the English examples are words like cuckoo, crash or slurp, which
are onomatopoeic. However, such words are few in any human language. Most of the words in a
language are arbitrary in nature.

4. Productivity:

A very important feature of all languages is that we can produce and understand many novel (new)
utterances. A child who has learnt his/ her mother tongue can form and produce utterances which
he/ she has never heard before. Moreover, adults have to deal with new situations and are able to
use language for new situations. For example, I may say, “I have taken a bath with oil this
morning”. You might not have heard this utterance earlier in your life but you are able to
understand this utterance. This property of human language is called productivity or creativity.
This also means that there is no limit to the utterances or sentences of a human language. This also
means that the potential number of utterances in a language is infinite.

Animal signaling is very limited as compared to human language. For example, gibbons can only
produce nine different cries (sounds) and each has a different signal. But nine signals are very
limited in number. Human beings can produce infinite (unlimited) number of utterances.

5. Cultural Transmission:

We need to first understand the meaning of ‘inherit’. There are several things that human beings
inherit from their parents. For example, we inherit the colour of our eyes or hair from our parents.
So, you may inherit brown eyes and dark hair from your parents. However, we do not inherit a
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language from our parents. An infant born to Chinese parents (who live in China and speak
Chinese) may be brought up by English speakers in the United States of America. The child will
grow up speaking Chinese although he may look like a Chinese. On the other hand, a dog born in
India and sent to the United States of America can only bark. Its bark in India and America is the
same.

Therefore, we do not inherit a human language from our parents but have to acquire it from the
people who are near us in our infancy and childhood. This means that a language is culturally
transmitted. A human child is not born with a language but has to acquire it.

6. Duality:

Language is organized at two levels. This property id called ‘duality’. First, we have the individual
sounds like ,  and . Then we can put them in the form of a word like pen, book and so on. Each
language has a limited number of sounds. For example, English has only 44 sounds. These sounds
in English are divided into consonants and vowels & diphthongs. For example English has
consonants like , ,  and  and vowels like , , , and . With the help of these 44 sounds, a
large number of words are formed in English.

Animals do not have this facility. They can produce a few sounds but cannot put these sounds in
the form of words. Therefore, animals do not have the property of duality.

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