DEFINITION OF LANGUAGE

Language is a structured system or arbitrary vocal sounds and sequences of sounds

which is used in interpersonal communication. (Modern Linguistics by Caroll)
Language is an open system interacting with, changed by and changing its
environment as part of culture. (Social Scientist)
Language is a system which relates meanings to substance. Language is a mental
phenomenon. It is innate. Man has the genetically imparted ability for language
learning. (Transformationalists by Noam Chomsky)
Language is a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of
conventionalized sings, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings.
(Websters New International Dictionary)
THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE
Concerning the origin of the first language, there are hypotheses, or beliefs which are
neither can be proven or disproved given present knowledge.
A. Biblical Account
1. Tower of Babel. Confusion of tongues
2. Belief in divine creation. Many societies throughout history believed that language is
the gift of gods to humans. The most familiar is found in Genesis 2:20, which tells us
that Adam gave names to all living creatures. This belief predicates that humans were
created from the start with an innate capacity to use language.
B. Linguistic
1. The ding-dong hypothesis. Language began when humans started naming objects,
actions and phenomenon after a recognizable sound associate with it in real life. This
hypothesis holds that the first human words were a type of verbal icon, a sign whose
from is an exact image of its meaning: crash became the word for thunder, boom for
explosion.
2. The pooh-pooh hypothesis holds that the first words came from involuntary
exclamations of dislike, hunger, pain, or pleasure, eventually leading to the expression
of more developed ideas and emotions. In this case the first word would have been an
involuntary ha-ha-ha, wa-wa-wa, these began to be used to name the actions which
caused these sounds.
3. The bow-bow hypothesis (the most famous and therefore the most ridiculed
hypothesis) holds that vocabulary developed form imitations of animal noises, such as:
Moo, bark, hiss, meow, quack-quack. In other words, the first human words were a type
of index, a sign whose form is naturally connected with its meaning in time and space.

a) Dog: bow-bow; Chinese: wu-wu; Japanese: wan-wan; Russian: gaf-gaf, tyaff-tyaff

b) Cat: meow; Russian: myaoo; Chinese: mao; Japanese: nya-nya; French: ron-ron
c) Pig : oink-oink; Russian: hryu-hryu; Chinese: oh-ee-ohee; Japanese: bu-bu
d) Rooster- Russian: kukareiku; Japanese: kokekoko
4. A somewhat different hypothesis is the ta-ta hypothesis. Charles Darwin
hypothesized (though he himself was skeptical about his own hypothesis) that speech
may have developed as a sort of mouth pantomime: the organs of speech were used to
imitate the gestures of the hand. In other words, language developed from gestures that
began to be imitated by the organs of speech-the first words were lip icons of hand
gestures.
C. Biological Bases
Language in humans is clearly dependent on their having a society in which to learn it,
other humans to speak to, and the intelligence to make it possible; humans also appear
to have evolved with specialized neural mechanisms that subserve language.
There are some strong arguments for the case that human language is biologically
determined that it owes its existence to specialized structures in the brain and in the
neurological system of human.
Language Areas in the Brain
1. Brocas area in the left frontal region is very near to that part of the motor strip that
controls tongue and lips, and damage to Brocas area in a typical aphasic syndrome,
called Brocas aphasia, in which patient has good comprehension but great difficulty
with pronunciation and with producing the little words of the language.
2. Wernickes area is located in the posterior left temporal lobe, near the auditory
association areas in the brain. Damage to Wernickes are produces an aphasia that is
characterized by fluent speech with many neologisms, or nonsense words, and poor
comprehension. One Wernickes aphasic asked to name an ashtray, said, Thats a
fremser. When he was asked to point to the fremser, however, he had no idea what the
examiner meant.
3. Arcuate Fasciculus is a band of subcortical fibers that connects Wernickes area
and Brocas area. If you ask someone to repeat what you say, the incoming message is
processed in Wernikes area and then sent out over the arcuate fasciculus to Brocas
area, where it is programmed for production. Patients with lesions in the arcuate
fasciculus are unable to repeat, their disorder is called conduction aphasia.
DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF LANGUAGE
1. Duality of patterning
Limited sounds but limitless production
2. Displacement
Ability to relate experiences in the past to present

3. Open-endedness
Ability to say anything that had never been said before
4. Stimulus-freedom
Ability to say anything we want in any given context
5. Arbitrariness
6. Human vocal tract
7. Recursion
Ability of a person to produce a sentence within a sentence
8. Productive or creative
9. Social Phenomenon
Language is used to establish social ties
10. Complex
GENERAL FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE
According to Michael A.K. Halliday
1. Instrumental (I want function of language) = getting things done
Micro functions = naming, pronouncing, getting, suggesting, persuading, directing
2. Regulatory (Do as I tell you function) = regulating events as they happen
Micro functions= approving or disapproving, encouraging and discouraging, setting
rules, addressing the action
3. Representational (Ive got something function) = giving information, making
statements
Micro function = reporting, giving account, explaining, relaying messages, informing
4. Interactional (You and me function) = establish social relationship
Micro functions = greetings, joking, teasing, inviting, accepting, parting, turn-taking
5. Personal (Here I come function) = individual has their own voice.
Micro functions = explaining, endorsing, cursing, expressing anger, apology
6. Heuristic (Tell me why function) = to acquire knowledge and understanding; to
explain the world
Micro functions = questioning, probing, answering, arguing, concluding, hypothesizing,
analyzing, experimenting
7. Imaginative (lets pretend) = writing poems, novel, short stories