What Makes a Language a Language?
It is estimated that humans have had the ability for verbal communication for around 50,000 to upwards of 27 million years. From then to now, humans have developed the most complicated form of communication across all living species: language.
Language gives us the ability to reveal our thoughts, feelings, and ideas to others. Language has built empires, protected freedom, sent man to the moon, and much more. Without language, humanity would not be where it is today. But, are humans the only living things that use language to communicate?
Animals have had the ability to communicate with each other for much longer than humans. Dogs use bark or show their teeth to intimidate potential threats. Birds use elaborate dances and songs to attract mates. Rattlesnakes shake their tail to warn off predators. Its obvious that animals can communicate with each other, albeit in unique ways. But are barks, dances, and rattles parts of a language?
According to linguists, the answer is no. Linguistics is the study of language, its structure, and how factors affect its development. Under linguistics, to qualify as a language, the form of communication needs to have 3 qualities: Discrete Infinity, Displacement, and Joint Attention.
What Is Discrete Infinity, Displacement, And Joint Attention?
Discrete Infinity means that the language has a limited set of building blocks that can be put together in an infinite amount of combinations. For example, English has 26 letters which can be used to create an infinite number sentences.
John ate a hamburger.
Bob said, “John ate a hamburger”.
Mary said, “Bob said, ‘John ate a hamburger’”.
Jill said, “Mary said, ‘Bob said, “John ate a hamburger”’”.
This type of sentence can go on infinitely, despite there being only 26 letters in the English Alphabet.
Displacement in a language means that people can communicate about time, space, and abstract notions. We can talk about what happened in the past, what’s happening now, or what will happen tomorrow. We can talk about distant objects or places. We can even talk about intangible concepts like Faith, Hope, and Love.
Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492.
Mars has the largest mountain in the solar system.
We have to work together to bring peace to our country.
These sentences talk about things in the past, things far away, and things that aren’t tangible.
Joint Attention means that people share the same intention. Humans like to work together, and to do that, people have to perceive what others are trying to do, so they figure out how to help. Language plays a big role in communicating our goals and creating a common interest.
Can you help me take these boxes to my car?
Do you need help with your homework?
Let’s work together to confront the bully.
Sentences like these are examples of how people create shared goals.
What Is The Use Of This?
Together, Discrete Infinity, Displacement, and Joint Attention define what a language is and helps show how other forms of communication are not a language.
These qualities help prove that sign languages are indeed languages. They have a limited number of building blocks that can be used to create an infinite number of sentences that can create a common goal and describe time, space, or concepts.
However these three traits also invalidate music, computer programming, and animal communication as languages.
While music has a limited number of musical notes that can be used in an infinite number of ways, these notes must be played in specific patterns to be counted as music and even then, can only be used to communicate a limited number of ideas and feelings.
At its current state, Computer Programming lacks the ability to communicate topics in relation to time, space, and abstract nouns. However, Artificial Intelligence and Computational Linguistics are helping computers to understand language more and more.
Although certain animals are able to fill the requirements of displacement and joint attention, they do so in a limited manner. (For example, bees use dances to describe the location of flowers they found, but they cannot talk about flowers in another country. Apes are able to look or be aware of the same thing, but they cannot work together for the same goal at the same level humans can). On top of that, all known animal communication has no fundamental building blocks that can be used to create a unlimited number of thoughts.
Why Should I Care?
By knowing what constitutes a language, linguists can determine the difference between dialects, languages, and other forms of communication. Determining this difference plays an important role in analyzing the causes and effects of the development of language in different places around the world and gives us an insight into the diverse histories of people around the world.
