Design Features of Human Language (DF)

1. Design Features of Human Language (DF) What are the features that we must find in a communication system to call it a language?

2. Charles Hockett • DF: Characteristics that describe what a language is. • DF: It gives us a description of what a language should be.

3. Every language is a communication system • Every communication system is not necessarily a language

4. Common design features that ALL communication systems have (including human language) • Mode of communication: • A communication system should be able to send and receive messages.

5. Common design features that ALL communication systems have (including human language) • Semanticity • A property that requires all signals to have a meaning and a function in a communication system

6. Common design features that ALL communication systems have (including human language) • Pragmatic function: • Every communication system should be used for a purpose. Communication systems are not trivial, but essential.

7. Design features that SOME communication systems have (including human language): • Interchangeability: • The ability of individuals to both transmit and receive messages; and comprehend them.

8. Design features that SOME communication systems have (including human language): • Cultural Transmission: • Aspects of language that cannot be acquired only through communicative interaction.

9. Romeo & Juliet :Act 2, Scene2 • [original text]: • O, be some other name! • What’s in a name? That which we call a rose • By any other word would smell as sweet. • So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called, • Retain that dear perfection which he owes • Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, • And for that name, which is no part of thee • Take all myself. • [modern text] • What does a name mean? The thing we call a rose would smell just as sweet if we called it by any other name. Romeo would be just as perfect even if he wasn’t called Romeo. Romeo, lose your name. Trade in your name—which really has nothing to do with you—and take all of me in exchange.

10. Design features that SOME communication systems have (including human language): • Arbitrariness : • Ferdinand De Saussure • The pairing between sound and meaning is conventional or arbitrary.

11. Design features that SOME communication systems have (including human language): • Arbitrariness : • Evidence for Arbitrariness • 1) seed • 2) pit • 3) stone

12. Design features that SOME communication systems have (including human language): • Arbitrariness : • Evidence for Arbitrariness

13. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsMfaIOsT3M&feature=relmfu

14. Design features that SOME communication systems have (including human language): • Discreteness: • Ali + is + tall. • composed of 9 discrete sounds • Languages of the world consist of a set of sounds that vary from 10 to 100 meaningless sounds • From those discrete individual meaningless sound units, we can combine them to make meaningful words; those discrete units (words) are combined to make phrases; those large discrete units combine to make sentences. • communication systems that can combine those discrete units in different combinations have more expressive power than those that do not

15. Design features that are exclusively of the human language design: • Displacement: • The ability of a language to communicate about things, actions, and ideas that are not present in space or time while speakers are communicating

16. Design features that are exclusively of the human language design: • Productivity: • Productivity = Creativity = Recursion • Closely related to discreteness • The fact that we can put together the discrete units of language in a systematic, rule-governed way is called productivity.

17. What are the benefits of those nine design features? • C++ • Natural language vs Formal language