THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE transmitted, while animal language is genetically

transmitted. A person learns the language of the

Language is a system of arbitrary vocal community he is in, not necessarily the language of
symbols used for human communication. his parents. Animals learn the language of their
The key words in the definition are system, species; that is, dogs will only learn to bark and cats
arbitrary, vocal, symbols, human and will only learn to meow no matter where they
communication. happen to live; (2) Animal language does not have
Language consists of two subsystems: a the subsystems of sounds and of meaning; and (3)
system of sounds and a system of meanings. There Animals do not use language as humans do: to talk
is a finite number of sounds in a language which about the past or the future; to argue on a subject, to
can be combined in a limited number of ways to express opinions.
form units of meaning. These units of meaning in Language as communication. Language is a
turn can be grouped into an unlimited number of means of communication between individuals. It
sentences. The permissible groupings of sounds are helps people to express their needs, their feelings,
called phonotactic arrangements and those for their thoughts. Sometimes the communication takes
meanings called syntactic arrangements. For the form of social amenities such as greetings and
example, in English an initial consonant cluster like leave-takings, small talk at parties or even in public
spr- can occur, but not sml-. A word like dogs is vehicles. In such instances, language is used merely
possible, but not *dgso. A noun like shirt can take to “keep communication channels open.”
the plural suffix -s to form shirts, but no other
suffix can be added after s. The sentence He works Other Characteristics of Language
in an office is grammatical, but no one would
accept a string of words like *works he office an in Language is creative or productive.
or *office he in works an as an English sentence Language consists of a finite set of rules which can
since it does not follow English word in order. generate an infinite number of sentences. A native
To say that language is arbitrary simply can speaker can produce or create sentences which
means that there is no connection between words he may never have read or heard before bacause he
and their meanings. The words in a language and has internalized these rules of his language.
their meanings are a matter of convention or the Language is constantly changing. Words
result of agreement among the speakers of the may be pronounced differently as English knife
language. Another way of explaining this is to say which has dropped the /ka/ from its original
that there is no way of predicting the number of pronunciation of /kanayf/; old forms may be
consonants and vowels in a language, whether and replaced, like the pronouns thou, thy, and thine
how nouns and verbs are inflected, how adjectives which have given way to you, your and yours; or
and adverbs are intensified, or the order of the words from another languages may become part of
elements in a sentence. the lexicon of a language, like guru, and boondock
Language is basically oral. Writing is only which are now used in English.
a representation on paper of the sounds produced in Language are unique. Every language has
speaking. While written symbols take various forms its own inventory of sounds, its own grammatical
and several letters may represent a single sound, as units, and its own syntactic patternings. Were it not
in the case of English, the sounds in different so, there would not be so many different languages
languages are all produced through the articulatory in the world.
or speech organs. Certain features of the spoken Language are similar in that they all have a
language are not ordinarily reflected in written sound system, and words or phrases that may
form, e.g., stress, pitch, juncture. Moreover, there function as nominals, verbals, adverbials and
are many languages in the world which have not adjectivals.
been recording in writing. A language is adequate for its own
Language as symbol. People use words to speakers; that is, it serves the purpose of the culture
talk about ideas, objects and actions, and these of its users. No language is better or worse, more
matopoec words or words which imitate the sounds complete or more beautiful than any other
they refer to, like hiss, bang, splash, but there are language. Filipino, for instance, has different terms
only a few of them in a language and their sounds for rice, e.g., palay, bigas, malagkit, binlid, pinipig,
depend on the particular sounds of a language. sinaing, nilugaw, bahaw, tutong, because rice is our
Language as human. Human language is staple food. English does not have equivalents for
different from animal language in many ways, these terms because its speakers have no need for
namel: (1) Human language is a culturally them.