Definitions of language
For a start, let us take a look at the various definitions by applied
linguists:
- “the faculty of articulating
words” (Saussure, 1916)
- “Language is a purely human
and noninstinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by
means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols” (Sapir, 1921)
- “language as genetic
inheritance, a mathematical system, a social fact, the expression of
individual identity, the expression of cultural identity, the outcome of
dialogic interaction, a social semiotic, the intuitions of native
speakers, the sum of attested data, a collection of memorised chunks, a
rule-governed discrete combinatory system, or electrical activation in a
distributed network” (Cook & Seidlhofer, 1995)
- “In informal usage, a
language is understood as a culturally specific communication system”; “In
the varieties of modern linguistics that concern us here, the term
“language” is used quite differently to refer to an internal component of
the mind/brain” (Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch, 2002)
- “A language is a system of
meaning – a semiotic system.” (Halliday, 2003: 2)
- “language as a finite system
of elements and principles that make it possible for speakers to construct
sentences to do particular communicative jobs” (Fasold & Connor-Linton, 2006)
- “Language as a tool for
communication” (Nunan, 2007)
- “Language is foremost a
means of communication, and communication almost always takes place within
some sort of social context”; “language is a rule-based system of signs” (Amberg & Vause, 2009: 2)
- “a communication system
composed of arbitrary elements which possess an agreed-upon significance
within a community. These elements are connected in rule-governed ways” (Edwards, 2009: 53)
- “Unpacking the definition
‘language as a rule-governed discrete combinatory system’, we see that
language is a system, a system comprised of discrete segments: phonemes,
lexemes, morphemes.”; “Language as social fact” (Larsen-Freeman, 2011)
- “language, a system of
conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols by means of which
human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its
culture, express themselves.” (Robins and Crystal, 2021)
………………………
Source : https://www.britannica.com/topic/language
Many definitions of language have been proposed.
Henry Sweet, an English phonetician and language scholar, stated: “Language
is the expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds combined into words. Words
are combined into sentences, this combination answering to that of ideas into
thoughts.”
The American linguists Bernard Bloch and George L. Trager formulated the following
definition: “A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of
which a social group cooperates.” Any succinct definition of language makes a
number of presuppositions and begs a number of questions. The first, for
example, puts excessive weight on “thought,” and the second uses “arbitrary” in
a specialized, though legitimate, way.
Links to Read More-
No comments:
Post a Comment