2. Specificity of language as the system of signs

Signs and sign systems can be either natural or artificial. The examples of natural signs are animal communication, the phenomena of nature, and symptoms of a disease. Among artificial (man-made) signs are movies, photographs, paintings, music, fashions, road signs, etc. Language is neither natural nor artificial sign system. It is a blend of both, since language emerges due to both nature and nurture. On the one hand, humans are genetically programmed to speak. On the other hand, the inborn language faculty can be activated only in the society. Besides, it is the society that influences the form acquired by a particular language system.

Language differs from other systems of signs due to such characteristics.

1. Language is a universal system of signs, i.e. it is used in all spheres of human life. All other sign systems can be ‘translated’ into natural language.

2. Language undergoes gradual changes through history, which are observed in the forms and meaning of linguistic units. With the course of time, such changes may become considerable.

3. The most distinctive feature of the system of language in its broad sense (as language and speech) is its hierarchical organization, where the units a lower level constitute the units of an upper level. These units belong to the building and communicative planes that differentiate between language in its narrow sense (as the system of elements that build the communicative units) and speech (as the system of communicative elements proper). The building and communicative planes are studies by different branches of linguistics (Fig. 1.6).

Along with the basic linguistic levels, there exist intermediate levels, which are in between two or three basic levels. The MORPHOPHONOLOGICAL level overlaps with the phonological and morphological levels. Its units are morphophonemes – the phonemes whose forms are determined by the morphemic environments; e.g. the plural –s in English nouns, which is pronounced as /s/, /z/ or /iz/. The DERIVATIONAL (WORD-FORMATION) level intersects with the morphological, lexical, and phrasal levels. Its units are derived words formed by several morphemes, the relation of which may resemble that in a phrase. The PHRASEOLOGICAL level is in between lexical, phrasal, and sentence levels. It is constituted by phraseological units whose meanings tend to resemble the meanings of words, but whose forms are those of phrases and sentences.

3. Human language vs. Animal communication

A useful approach to distinguish human language from the systems of animal communication was pioneered by the American linguist Charles Hockett who suggested to make a list of human language design features, and to consider whether they are shared by the systems of communication used by animals. The most important of these features are as follows.

1. Use of sound signals. Sound systems are employed by both humans and many animals.

2. Arbitrariness. There is often a strong recognizable link between the sign and the message an animal wishes to convey. The signs tend to be metonymically motivated indexes, since they exist in the form of natural physiological cries that regularly accompany reactions to particular experienced events. Unlike animals, humans use arbitrary, symbolic signs with different kinds of motivation.

3. The need for learning. Most animals automatically, without learning, know how to communicate. Their systems of communication are genetically inbuilt. To acquire their language, humans need a long learning process.

4. Duality. Animals that use vocal signals have a limited stock of basic sounds which vary according to species. The number of messages an animal can send is restricted to the number of basic sounds, or occasionally the basic sound plus a few simple combinations. Human languages work quite differently. Each language has a set of phonemes (their average number is in between 30 and 40). However, each phoneme is normally meaningless in isolation. To convey meanings, phonemes must be combined. This organization of language into two layers – the layer of sounds, and the layer of sound combinations – is known as duality, or double articulation.

5. Displacement. Most animals can communicate about things in the immediate environment only. Human language, by contrast, can communicate about things that are absent as easily as about things that are present. This phenomenon is known as displacement.

6. Creativity (Productivity). Most animals have a very limited number of messages they can send or receive. Besides, animals communicate about the same things over and over again, i.e. they repeat the same messages while ‘discussing’ the same ‘topics’. This type of restriction is not found in human language, which is essentially creative (or productive). The number of messages sent by humans is unlimited, as well as the number of topics they discuss. Humans can produce novel utterances whenever they want to.

7. Patterning. Many animal communication systems consist of a simple list of elements. There is no internal organization within the system. Conversely, human language is grounded on regular patterns for combining sounds, morphemes or words. Therefore, human language can be regarded as an intricate network of interlinked elements in which every item is held in its place and given its identity by all the other items.

8. Structure dependence. This feature, found only in human language, is grounded on patterning – the existence of language as a network of interlocking items. This network is involved in forming and understanding sentences: their meanings depend on understanding the initial structure of a sentence, rather than on the number of elements involved.

However, the recent studies of animal communication show that some features considered to be inherent only in human language (particularly, displacement and duality) can be also found in animals’ interaction.

(+ Aitchison, p. 18-19)