Properties of Human Language

What is language? is a system of conventional symbols (sound/ graphemes) that

are used for communication.

● Speech sound is only produced by humans

● Language is not inherited
● Language is acquired from culture
● Sound individually doesn’t say meaning

What is communication? Communication is the process of exchanging information,

ideas, thoughts, or feelings between individuals or groups.

Communicative Signals: Vocal signals produced with sound to communicate or

exchange information. (You say something so that you can get something done or
communicated)

Informative Signals: Physical or signals that let the other people know something
about us without having to say anything. (They know you have a cold because you
sneeze...)

Displacement: Unlike most animal communication systems that are tied to

immediate situations or stimuli. A property of human language which allows the
users of language to talk about things and events not present in the immediate
environment. We can refer to now, past and future time, and to the other locations.

Arbitrariness: There is no “natural” connection between a linguistic form and its

meaning. A property of linguistic signs is their arbitrary relationship with the objects
they are used to indicate. (They do not, in any way, fit the objects they denote).

Productivity (or Creativity or Open-endedness): A property of linguistic ability that

enable the language users to manipulate their linguistic resources to produce new
expressions and new sentences. It means that the potential number of utterances in
any human language is infinite.

Duality: Language is organized at two levels or layers simultaneously. At one level,

we have distinct sounds, and, at another level, we have distinct meanings. This
duality enables us to produce a very large number of sound combinations which are
distinct in meaning. (n, b, i have distinct sounds but none of them has intrinsic
meaning. When we combine them nib, bin we have another level with distinct
meaning each.)

Phonemes: the smallest distinct units of sound in a language.

Morphemes: the smallest meaningful units in language.

Reflexiveness: whereby it can be used to refer to, or describe, itself.

Cultural transmission: The fact that one acquires a language in a culture with other
speakers and not from parental genes. A process whereby language is passed on
from one generation to the next. Humans are born with the ability to acquire
language in general but not a specific language. Animals are born with a set of
specific signals that are produced instinctively.

Morphology is a branch of linguistics that focuses on the study of the structure and
formation of words in a particular language.

Discreteness: The sounds used in language are meaningfully distinct. (/p/, /b/; pack
and back are pronounced differently and this leads to a distinction in meaning)

Vocal-auditory Channel: Communication is generated via vocal organs and

perceived via the ears, and also through writing and gesture. animals have vocal
organs that allow them to produce sounds for communication, mating calls, warning
signals, territorial defense, and other purposes. Humans also have a vocal organ
that enables us to produce speech and a wide range of vocal sounds. Our vocal
organ is called the larynx, commonly known as the voice box

Reciprocity: Any speaker/sender of a linguistic signal can also be a

listener/receiver.

Specialization: Linguistic signals do not normally serve any other type of purpose,
such as breathing or feeding.

Rapid Fade: Linguistic signals are produced and disappear quickly.

Word formation, also known as word-formation or morphology, is a branch of

linguistics that focuses on how new words are created in a language. It involves
studying the various ways in which existing words or word elements (morphemes)
are combined or modified to form new words with different meanings, functions, or
grammatical properties.

Affixation: The addition of prefixes (e.g., un-, pre-), and suffixes (e.g., -ness, -ed), to
existing words to create new words or to modify their meanings or grammatical
Non- affixation: No affixes are needed it consists of coinage eponyms, borrowing,
blending, clipping, backformation, conversion, acronyms & initialism.

Prefix: It is added to the beginning of a word to change its meaning and make a new
word.
Suffix: It is added to the end of a word to change its function, making it into a
different part of speech.

Create -> Recreate (prefix "re-" added to change the meaning) Friend -> Friendship
(suffix "-ship" added to change the word to a noun)

Derivation: Affixations play a vital role. It derives new words from prefixes and
affixes.

Compounding: It’s joining two separate words. No affixes are needed in this
process
● Tooth + brush -> Toothbrush
● Air + port -> Airport

Derivational morphemes: We use these bound morphemes to make new words or

to make words of a different grammatical category from the stem.
Prefixes:
● Un-: undo, unhappy (changes meaning to "reverse" or "not")
● Pre-: prepay, prehistoric (indicates "before" or "prior to")
● Re-: redo, rebuild (implies "again" or "back")
Suffixes:
● -ish in foolish
● -er: teacher, singer (creates a noun denoting a person or agent)
● -ly: quickly, slowly (forms adverbs from adjectives)
● -able: lovable, readable (transforms verbs or adjectives into adjectives
indicating possibility or capability)

Lexical Morpheme: free morphemes, are morphemes that carry the main lexical or
semantic meaning in a word. They are the building blocks of content words, which
are words that carry specific meanings and convey information in a sentence.

Inflectional: These are not used to produce new words in the language, but rather
to indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word. -ing, -s, -es, -ed, -’s, -er,
-est.

Clipping: The creation of a new word by shortening an existing word without

changing its meaning significantly.

● Advertisement -> Ad
● Television -> TV

Blending: a combination of two separate words/ form to produce a single new term
Example:
 ● Breakfast + lunch -> Brunch
● Smoke + fog -> Smog

Backformation: A very specialized type of reduction process. It is due to

misconceptions of morphological analysis.

● Editor > to edit

● Sculpture > to sculpture
● Donation > to donate

Acronyms and Initialisms: Creating new words from the initial letters of a group of
words or syllables.

● National Aeronautics and Space Administration -> NASA

● Federal Bureau of Investigation -> FBI

Conversion: A change in the function of a word, for example, when a noun comes to
be used as a verb (without any reduction)

​ Noun to Verb:
● "Email" (noun) -> "I will email (verb) you later."
● "Text" (noun) -> "She will text (verb) her friend."
​ Adjective to Noun:
● "The poor (adjective) suffer in this society." -> "The poor (noun) need
assistance."

Systematicity: refers to the consistent and organized patterns that exist within a
language's structure and use. It is the principle that linguistic elements, such as
sounds, words, and grammatical rules.

Specialization: refers to the relationship between words or phrases within a

sentence, where the interpretation of one element depends on its position relative to
another element.