Introduction
Unlike the animal kingdom, human language and its system is one of the most unique and complex systems. This section examines the design features of human language that make it possible in the first place.
on to all human languages, despite their utterly diverse surface forms.
Key Design Features
Discreteness
Human language is characterized by discreteness, which makes it un-planned and develops in the human mind. This feature is observed in every person from birth onwards which suggests the innate ability to learn a language. The discrete units of a language (phonemes, morphemes, etc.) can be combined in a variety of different ways. Human language is made up of distinct parts, unlike animal signals that are continuous.
Arbitrariness
Arbitrariness refers to the lack of a direct relation between linguistic forms and their meanings. Words do not have any inherent connection to the things they refer to. For example, the word dog does not have any inherent dog-like quality. The only reason it refers to a dog is that is what we have decided. The relationship was created and agreed upon arbitrarily rather than a natural one.
Displacement
Human language has the power of displacement. This means that humans can talk about things that are not in the vicinity. Humans talk about what has happened, what might happen and what could happen. The ability to refer to things and events that are different from the present moment makes human language powerfully different from that of most animals.
Prevarication
An ability to speak falsely, especially with regard to actually >> prevarication. Our capability to make false statements, tell stories, develop fiction and state the impossible derives from human language. This ability allows for creativity and thinking outside the box but it also complicates human interaction and requires social mechanisms to establish trust and credibility.
Interchangeability
We can switch roles when we communicate in language. In ongoing exchanges, speakers become hearers and hearers become speakers. This capacity goes both ways in writing, as an author can experience-comprehension without having present the reader. Sharing interchangeability enables dialog, debate and collective communication through which shared knowledge is built.
Cultural Transmission
Animal communications, except sound signals, insists at birth. However, human languages are cultural and require consistent communication. Humans do have the ability to learn any language. But the language a person speaks is influenced by his culture. The provided text explains, “A baby born in Japan to Japanese parents which is adopted and brought up from birth by English speakers in the United States will inevitably speak English.”
Creativity
One of the most amazing features of human language is its creativity or productivity. With a limited number of units and rules, humans can generate an infinite number of new utterances. Most adults are able to produce and understand sentences that they have never heard before. This ability enables a language to change over time to accommodate new ideas, technologies, and situations without system-wide changes.
Duality of Patterning
Human language consists of two different levels of structural organization. This concept is called duality of patterning. The lowest levels consist of meaningless phonemes which combine to make meaningful morphemes and words. Higher units of meaning combine according to syntactic rules to form phrases, sentences and discourse. This organization have many layers which helps it run efficiently.
Vagueness
Language is very vague; many concepts are not sharply bound. Words such as “tall”, “soon” or “success” are indefinable. When people think of vagueness, it sometimes limits the ability to speak a particular language. However, vagueness does not limit the language. It enables metaphorical extension and creativity, restricted by rigid definitions.
Conclusion
The design features of human language refer to its architecture the universal capacities that allow all linguistic variation. Language can come in different shapes and sizes depending on the situation. The vocabulary and tone people use varies according to the situation but knowing why this happens requires an understanding of design features. These explain how the human capacity for language varies. The two aspects show that language is both a biological property of our kind and a social phenomenon shaped by cultural forces. The subject matter throughout this paper traces the complex sociolinguistic landscape.