LINGUISTICS 200

Design Features
of
Language
Lorna Rozelle, PhD Dept. of Ling, UW
 Agenda
• Assignments
• What is language?
• Communication versus Language
• Design features of language
• Animal communication versus human language
Next assignments
• Read Language Files 1.0-1.4, 14.1, 14.2
• Watch the movie, The Human Language.
• Do IPA Font Support Check (ungraded).
• Take practice quiz to get used to Canvas quizzes (ungraded).
• Quiz 1: What is language? Opens after class, due Tue at 11:59pm
• Looking ahead:
• Quiz 2: Phonetics.
• HW 1: Phonetics
Language and writing
• Spoken (or signed) language is primary. Writing is a way to record language.
• Languages were spoken long before they were written (150,000 versus
5,000 years ago).
• Most languages do not have a writing system (56%).
• Everybody learns to speak or sign a language without explicit instruction.
• You have to be taught how to read and write though explicit training.
• Whether you learn to read and write is accidental. (Has writing been
invented yet? Does your language have a writing system? Are you one of
the group of people who have the opportunity to be educated?)
• Brain processing of written language is overlaid on the spoken language
centers of the brain.
 Language ≠ Communication
Language is both more and less than communication.
There are many ways to communicate: body language, music, art.
Language isn’t always the best way to communicate:
• a lion has just entered the room
• how you want your stylist to cut your hair

We use language for other purposes, also:

• identity marker
• establish relationships with other people
• express our emotions
Laundry Washing Instructions
 What is language?
Defining language is really hard.

Language:
“An abstract cognitive system that uniquely allows
humans to produce and comprehend meaningful
utterances.” Language Files 12

Question: Is it unique to humans?

 Design Features of Language
If it is difficult to define language, perhaps we can come
up with some characteristics that a communication
system must have in order to be a language.

Charles Hockett (1960)

• Nine characteristics that distinguish language

from other communications systems
• A language must have all nine features.
 9 Design Features
Mode of communication Shared by all
3 Semanticity communication
Pragmatic function systems

+
Interchangeability
Cultural transmission
Arbitrariness Shared by some
6 communication
Discreteness
systems
Only human Displacement
language has Productivity
the last two.
✓ 
Interchangeability:

A user can both

transmit and
✓  receive messages.
 Cultural Transmission
Some aspect of the communication system is learned from
other users.
A Japanese child of French-speaking parents will speak French.

 PNW orcas:
Each pod
has its own
collection
of calls.

✓
 Arbitrariness
There is not (necessarily)
Human gesture:
a connection between
the form of the signal
Give me

and its meaning.
Human language:
cat
kissa ✓
gato
neko

I’m going to bite you.   I’m threating you with my bigness.

http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/animal.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p016dgw1
What design feature does this illustrate?
 What design features does
vervet communication have?

Yes No
• Arbitrariness • Displacement
• Cultural transmission • Productivity
• Interchangeability • Discreteness
Italian
Honeybees

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUCoLeI5Qxg&t=52s

Forager bees return to the hive and perform a special dance to communicate the
location of a food source, giving information on distance, direction, and quality.

Dance pattern: distance (round 20 ft, sickle 20-60 ft, tail-wagging >60 ft)
Number of repetitions: quality of food source (more = better)
Angle of movement: direction; angle of the food source from the sun
What design feature does this illustrate?
Conclusion:
Animal communication is very interesting, and it is
qualitatively and quantitatively different from human
language.

“It is about as likely that an ape will prove to have a language

ability as that there is an island somewhere with a species of
flightless bird waiting for human beings to teach them to fly.”

–Noam Chomsky
Saying animals do not have human
language does not diminish the abilities of
animals.
In fact, I think measuring animals’ abilities
by human yardsticks is wrong, as well as
disrespectful.
Stories about Plum and language:
• “Take it” and “No” and “I didn’t say take
it!”
• “Rachel’s home.”
Plum’s sense of smell is much greater than
mine. Trying to attribute her understanding
of the situation to a (small amount) of
human language disregards her astonishing
sense of smell.