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Language
See Language (journal) for the linguistics journal.
A language is a system of symbols and the rules used to manipulate them. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon. Though commonly used as a means of communication among people, human language is only one instance of this phenomenon. This article concerns the properties of language in general. For information specifically on the use of language by humans see the main article on natural language.
Properties of languageLanguages are not just sets of symbols. They also contain a grammar, or system of rules, used to manipulate the symbols. While a set of symbols may be used for expression or communication, it is primitive and relatively inexpressive, because there are no clear or regular relationships between the symbols. Because a language also has a grammar, it can manipulate its symbols to express clear and regular relationships between them. Another property of language is the arbitrariness of the symbols. Any symbol can be mapped onto any concept (or even onto one of the rules of the grammar). For instance, there is nothing about the Spanish word nada itself that forces Spanish speakers to use it to mean "nothing". That is the meaning all Spanish speakers have memorized for that sound pattern. But for Croatian, Serbian or Bosnian speakers, nada means "hope". However, it must be understood that just because in principle the symbols are arbitrary does not mean that a language cannot have symbols that are iconic of what they stand for. Words such as "meow" sound similar to what they represent (see Onomatopoeia), but they could be replaced with words such as "jarn", and as long as everyone memorized the new word, the same concepts could be expressed with it. Human languages
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See also (Lists)
- Category:Lists of languages
- Ethnologue - list of languages, locations, population and genetic affiliation
- List of basic linguistics topics
- List of language academies
- List of languages
- List of official languages
Notes
References
- Crystal, David (1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
- Crystal, David (2001). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
- Gode, Alexander (1951). Interlingua-English Dictionary. New York, Frederick Ungar Publishing Company.
- Kandel ER, Schwartz JH, Jessell TM. Principles of Neural Science, fourth edition, 1173 pages. McGraw-Hill, New York (2000).
- Katzner, K. (1999). The Languages of the World. New York, Routledge.
- Holquist, Michael. (1981) Introduction to Mikhail Bakhtin's The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin and London: University of Texas Press. xv-xxxiv
- McArthur, T. (1996). The Concise Companion to the English Language. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Further reading
- International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (Frawley 2003)
- The World's Major Languages (Comrie 1987)
- The Atlas of Languages (Comrie, Matthews, & Polinsky 1997)
External links
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