1 What is language

When you look at textbooks of linguistics, you can see that many of them start
with a definition of language, and then linguistics. This sounds quite natural --
start by defining what you will be talking about.
We are going to do the same -- let us start with some definitions of language:

“Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating

ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.” (Sapir
1921: 8)
“A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social
group cooperates.” (Bloch and Trager 1942: 5)
“From now on I will consider a language to be a set (finite or infinite) of
sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements"
(Chomsky 1957: 13)
“Language is symbolic in nature. It makes available to the speaker – for either
personal or communicative use – an open ended set of linguistic signs or
expressions, each of which associates a semantic representation of some kind
with a phonological representation.” (Langacker 1987: 11)

These are only four out of many different possible definitions.

What can we learn about language from them? Let's look at some of the
similarities and differences in these definitions, and think about why these
similarities and differences appear.

Similarities and differences

The first two definitions mention language as a human activity -- psychological

(being nested in the mind in (1)), and social (in (2)). The definition in (3) seems
to imply it (animals do not produce sentences), and the definition in (4) as well -
- the "speaker" mentioned in (4) seems to be human.

Language is used for communication and/or cooperation (as seen in (1), (2) and
(4)), but its purpose is not mentioned in (3). You can also use language "for
personal use" (in 4) - sometimes you may not want to convey information other
than the fact that you acknowledge the presence of the person next to you (e.g.
when you say hello to someone).

Language is learned (as opposed to being instinctive) (1).

Language consists of some units -- symbols are mentioned in (1) and (2) (and
partly in (4)), sentences are mentioned in (3) and signs are mentioned in (4).

The meaning of these units do not depend on their form -- this is what
"voluntary" means in (1) and "arbitrary" in (2).

Language is productive -- you can produce many different expressions using

linguistic units (whatever these units are) -- as seen in (3) and (4).

You can use language to talk about many different things, that are not
necessarily connected to the world around you (i.e. you can communicate "ideas,
emotions and desires" in (1).

So, as you can see many different elements are described in these definitions.
Perhaps one way of thinking about all of these similarities and differences is that
all of them together (along with many other possible definitions) actually
describe what language is. It is so difficult to define language simply because it
has so many different aspects. Therefore, some authors take an approach
whereby they mention various characteristics which distinguish language from
other types of communication.