05/05/2016

What Is Language? (Day 2)

Terms
 Linguistic Competence – Essentially the potential for knowing and using a language
 Linguistic Performance – How well someone actually speaks language
 Phonetics – The study of speech sounds
 Phonology – The study of how sounds are arranged in language
 Syntax – The study of how words are arranged in a sentence
 Semantics – The meaning of language
 Mode of Transmission – How language is transmitted (auditory, gestural, etc.)
 Semanticity – The characteristic that language has to convey some sort of meaning
 Pragmatic Function – The characteristic that language must convey meaning for a
purpose (where to get food, how we’re feeling)
 Discreteness – The characteristic that a language has small discrete units which can be
put together to make larger statements (words make sentences)
 Arbitrariness – The symbols and stuff that make up language don’t have a clear
connection to their meaning (dog and perro have nothing to do with actual dogs)
 Interchangeability – Users of language can send and receive messages
 Cultural transmission – Language is passed on through other users
 Displacement – The ability to discuss ideas and objects that are not physically present
(unicorns)
 Productivity – The ability to produce an infinite number of sentences from the basic
discrete units
Linguistics is the Science of Language
 Competence vs. Performance
o Linguistics studies competence over performance because performance generally
varies from person to person, where competence does not
o We can’t directly observe competence, so must observe performance
 Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive.
o It does not aim to lay down the final word, rather to “observe and report”
 Linguistics also only studies spoken (or gestured) language
o Not everyone is literate, but the vast majority of people can speak a language
 Thus, spoken language is more common across humans than written,
which is a big reason linguists choose to study it
o Spoken language is innate, while writing needs to be taught more formally
 Written language has only been around for ~6,000 years, compared to
spoken language’s ~100,000.
o Writing is often times polished, while spoken language is spontaneous
o Written language is not parsed in the same manner as spoken language
  Writing has garden path sentences
 Linguistics is concerned with natural language
o Programming languages, Morse code, semaphore are not considered as they did
not develop naturally.
o Not something a child could pick up
 Subfields of linguistics
o There are multiple subfields of linguistics
 Phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, etc.
o Linguists specialize in a specific subfield
Design Features
 There are multiple communication systems out there in the world. However not all can be
considered languages
 Design features are aspects of a communication system used to characterize
communication systems and languages
 All communication systems have a mode of communication, semanticity, and pragmatic
function
o This can be seen in every animal communication system, as apes used gestures
and howls to mean certain things to alert other apes of enemies or to find food
 Some communication systems have interchangeability, cultural transmission,
arbitrariness, and discreteness
 Only human languages have all of the above seven, plus displacement and productivity
o To date, no animal communication system has been shown to display ALL nine
design features, a property essential to the languages linguists study

In the previous lecture we discussed a broad overview of linguistics, including what linguists do
and what language is. In this lecture, we discussed these in further detail, and finally defined
what language is.