Special Characteristics of Human Language
Both humans and animals have
language as a system of communication. Dogs bark, cats mew. Dolphins, bees and
ants have probably the most sophisticated animal communications. But human
language possesses certain special qualities which animals do not have. These
qualities of human language distinguish it from the animal language. The first of these qualities
can be called "duality." This refers to the way in which a stretch of
speech can be cut up into units. For example, a sentence such as "my
father is a very pious man" may be segmented into words:
My/father/is/a/very /pious/man. These segments can be split up into further
units into sounds. For example, the word "man" can be broken into the
sounds: m/a/n€ The same sounds can be
used in the construction of other words in
I English. The second quality is "creativity". This quality
enables a human being to make an infinite number of sentences, and understand
sentences which he has not heard before. The third quality is
"arbitrariness". It means there is no direct connection between the
sound or form of any word and the object which it represents. For to refer to a
tree, German has "Baum" English has "tree", and French has
"arbre". The fourth quality is
"displacement". It means that the language can be used—sentences
can be made and understood- at times and places where the context referred to is not present. For example, the
expression "A glass of milk" can be understood even if the object
itself is not present there at the time of speaking. These are the four
qualities which distinguish human language from animal language.
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