Arbitrariness of human language in 100 words
Answers
Answer:
The generally accepted view of those who study language professionally is that language is an arbitrary, cultural construct; language, on this view, is learnt by listening to speakers of the language of the particular community into which an infant is born; the words used in the language as well as the particular grammar or syntax of the language have developed historically as a social product and been handed down by tradition.
At first sight, it might seem a highly academic question whether or not language is arbitrary, of interest only to linguisticians, etymologists and so on. But to say that language is arbitrary and a purely cultural product is to assert that there is no basis for relating language to other aspects of human biology, to evolution as shown in the development of brain structure and the physiological differences between men and animals. It would be a strange result if the manifestation of the major and many would say absolutely crucial human ability, the ability to speak and understand language, should on this view turn out to be something which cannot be explained and for which, in principle, no explanation can even be attempted.
'Arbitrary' means chance, unmotivated, without purpose - and those who view languages as wholly arbitrary structures are saying that they are the product of chance, guided by no objective, that the availability of words and the structures of any language are completely purposeless. Yet at the same time all would recognise that language is the fundamental instrument for human communities, the essential medium of communication, the precise and powerful tool of thought, the basis for scientific and technological progress. If such a miraculous instrument is arbitrary in origin, function and structure, then one can only fall back on a belief in myth to explain it. The ancient Egyptians believed that the word was given to mankind by the god Ptah. They at least recognised the real problem, that language must have had some origin.
One wonders why academic students of language professionally have been so attached to what at first sight would seem a disastrous foundation for any science, the belief that the form and underlying structure of the subject of study is arbitrary, irrational, chance. Perhaps a cynical view, and a partial one, would be that one important effect of arbitrariness as the starting assumption for language study is to delimit an exclusive field of research for the linguists, to post a large 'No Entry' sign to the domain of linguistics and to tell others, psychologists, physiologists, neurologists, that they will be wasting their time if they try to apply their theories and technical procedures to language. Fortunately some of these other scientists have not been deterred, for example, Karl Lashley, Eric Lenneberg, Roger Brown, and in another quite new discipline, that of artificial intelligence and computational linguistics, pioneering work is being done, untrammelled by the traditional restraints of linguistics.
Explanation:
Answer:
Language is a system that consists of the development, acquisition, maintenance and use of complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so; a language is any specific example of such a system.
The scientific study of language is called linguistics. Questions concerning the philosophy of language, such as whether words can represent experience, have been debated at least since Gorgias and Plato in ancient Greece. Thinkers such as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while others like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought. 20th-century philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language. Major figures in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky.