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ENAA 211 - Coggle Diagram

- - - - It is difficult to formulate a definition that would capture all aspects of a language. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary (2008:662) defines language as “the system of sounds and words used by humans to express their thoughts and feelings”. Gamble and Gamble (2006:100) state that language is “a unified system of signs that permits a sharing of meaning”, while Van der Walt and Evans (2019:1) claim that language is “a set of symbols and a system of rules that determine how the symbols are combined”. Owens (2012:6) describes language as “a socially shared code or conventional system for representing concepts through the use of arbitrary symbols and rule-governed combinations of those symbols”. From these definitions, we can draw the following conclusions:
      -  Language is a complex, rule-governed but creative system
        Language – universally – comprises sounds that create words that those who know the code (language) will understand when used in the right combination. Sounds produced randomly and in isolation are generally meaningless noises until used in a complex, fixed and interrelated speech pattern. The same applies in those communities where language has been formalised into a written script. Symbols, such as alphabet letters, raised dots, hand gestures or pictograms, are combined according to grammatical rules to create meaning in a written or visual form. The Roman alphabet (as learnt at school in many countries worldwide) consists merely of 26 letters. Yet grouped or broken down into the correct combination with spaces in the appropriate places, an infinite number of words and sentences are created which can be read or uttered – anything from an SMS to a WhatsApp message to a fairy tale.
        Language is also creative because, although we may only know x number of words, we can combine them into many different, meaningful utterances. No one learnt every single sentence from their caregivers as a child. One learnt sounds and words and instinctively learnt how to put them together according to one’s native language rules. Furthermore, one does not plan the sentences one will say each time one speaks to someone. Our utterances are spontaneous expressions of a combination of words. We are creative when we change the ordinary The birds sang into The tiny birds twittered excitedly. Using different greeting forms, depending on the greeted person’s identity, is also an example of our creativity, e.g., Howzit! Hi! Good morning! Yes, tjommie! Hey, my bra! Hello! We turn statements into questions or negatives; we lengthen sentences by adding clauses. The possibilities for expressing ourselves with the limited number of words we know are limitless. As long as we work with words precisely and sensibly, others who know the language should be able to understand and communicate with us in a meaningful way.
      -  Language is a shared code Think of spy stories: The good guys find a note written by the bad guys, but it’s written in code. They have to decipher or crack the code to know what the bad guys are planning. So, until they have figured out what each symbol or letter or numeral means, they will not understand the message that was written in code. Any system of symbols used to convey meaning between members of a speech community can be referred to as a code. So, to understand someone from outside one’s community, one would need to know their “code”, i.e., be able to recognise the sounds or written symbols of their language. The word “code” usually refers to the spoken and written form of a language but may include, for example, sign language and braille – codes used by persons with hearing or sight impairments. The symbols used in mathematics, sciences or a music score are also considered a code as they have meaning for those persons who can read and interpret such symbols, for example §, Ω, €, ≤, ¼, Ʃ, °C, ♂, and ♪. If one can speak and understand several codes (languages), one would be referred to as being multilingual.
      -  Language is a social tool. In the previous section, we referred to language as a shared code. By implication, this means that we need to interact with other humans to exchange information or share our feelings and ideas as humans. We use language in various ways when we communicate with other humans. We speak, we listen, we write, we draw or read. We stand closer to someone or further away. We communicate using gestures, facial expressions and other body language signals. We even communicate with the brand names and designer labels we proudly display! This sharing of meaning in verbal and nonverbal ways is the human species’ unique means of manifesting what they think or want others to think. This interaction consists of the encoding, transmitting and decoding of messages and is an active process in which both the sender and receiver need to make meaning. As early as the 4th century BC, the Chinese philosopher Confucius and his Greek and Roman counterparts Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and other intellectuals were already formulating ideas about human communication and its importance as a social skill. The essence of human communication, regardless of the size of the audience, is interpersonal engagement. The communication process is ongoing, initiated by a sender and responded to when the receiver gives feedback somehow. This repetitive communicative action, broadly speaking, never ceases but can be divided into various episodes and takes diverse forms, e.g., verbal and nonverbal communication. Anything that impedes communication has been labelled as noise. Noise does not only refer to actual sounds such as dogs barking, weed-eaters whining or jet planes flying overhead, which could be distracting or may distort the message. Instead, noise can also include the aspect of semantic noise, i.e., not comprehending the verbal code being used or even not having sufficient proficiency in that code. Noise includes sensory or external impressions and psychological or internal noise. Whether it is a stuffy or cold classroom or whether a learner is distressed or hungry, such noise negatively influences communication and thus leads to poor understanding (Cleary, 2003; Louw & Du Plooy-Cilliers, 2003; Erasmus-Kritzinger, Bowler & Goliath, 2001; Steinberg, 1995; Van Staden, Marx & Erasmus-Kritzinger, 2007).
        Some cultures use words to describe a young child merely as a “thing” until they learn to talk. This approach to the young child suggests that one becomes a community member only once one has acquired the ability to express one’s needs and desires in speech. Furthermore, it is generally considered atypical for people to speak to themselves – strengthening the view that a language is a social tool.
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        • Human language is infinite since creatures cannot say things in more than one way. Nor can they relay messages that fall outside their fixed frame of reference. Creatures’ signal repertoire is limited to that which species have been using for aeons. Human languages have a finite set of rules, but an infinite number of utterances can be produced that all have meaning when appropriately combined.
        
        • Human language is creative yet organised. Any language can be broken up into ordered or reordered units. They can also be combined into numerous patterns that have meaning. At a micro level, we can analyse morphemes and affixes; at a macro level, we can write poems, plays, novels, and screen scripts.
        
        • Human language allows for displacement. In contrast, creatures have no sense of the past or future. Thus, their communication is not time-related. A dog cannot remind its owner that she has not given him a bone this month. Humans talk about things not present in the immediate environment, such as a friend who has emigrated or abstract matters like cowardice or angels.
        
        • Human language is culturally transmitted. Creatures all make the same hereditary sounds associated with their particular species very soon after birth, but none of these sounds develops further to become more complicated speech. Human babies acquire a language from those who speak to them. Therefore, despite a baby’s physical features, they can acquire the language of those who speak to them most regularly. A practical example in this regard is the following: An abandoned baby found on the garbage dump of the Witwatersrand may be adopted by Swedish parents, after which the baby will learn to speak Swedish effortlessly. In the same way, a Chinese newborn may learn to speak Xhosa or Afrikaans.
        
        • Human language is produced by intricate and specially designed speech-producing structures that are very different from the breathing systems of other creatures.
        
        • Human language depends on sufficient and appropriate input. Babies all make the same sounds for the first few months of their lives. That is why a mother does not necessarily discover any hearing impairment in her child immediately. Only later it becomes evident that there is no typical language development. Children who have grown up in isolation or without sufficient human language input tend to be inarticulate and can only mimic the sounds they have been exposed to, e.g., feral children. If animals had the capacity for acquiring language, then why does a cat still just meow?
        
        • Human language involves complex mental processes. Creatures react on instinct. They have no cognitive ability to plan their lives, set goals, or take charge of their circumstances. Their calls and squeaks are not articulate and are generally stimulus-bound. When it appears as if parrots or monkeys or even whales are responding to human speech, it is, in fact, merely a conditioned response to some stimulus, followed by a reward of some sort. Thus, the creature does not comprehend what it is “saying”.
        
        • Human language is collaborative. This means humans need to speak to other humans because we need to share our ideals, express an opinion or shock someone with our thoughts. We even need another person to which we can lie. We usually use language publically, i.e., with others. We may pray or worship in private, but we assume that the deity we speak to understands us and responds accordingly. We may believe that our pets understand us, but they react to our hand signals, tone of voice. Only members of the human species – if they share the same language – can interact meaningfully with each other.
        
        • Human language has a highly complex grammar system regardless of what the language is. Creatures do not have ways to indicate degrees of comparison, negatives, reported speech, adjectives or passive voice in any of their communication systems.
        
        • Human language can be codified into other forms, such as writing, pictograms, music, tables, diagrams, or numbers. Animals have no way of capturing their “speech” or signalling systems in another form; they cannot write or draw meaningfully.
        
        • Human language is dynamic. That implies that it is ever-changing, evolving, and growing. English has originated from Indo-European, just like Latin, with strong influences from French, and today it certainly sounds very different to the English which Shakespeare spoke. Who still knows what a seven single or a hula hoop™ is? Think of some of the words we use now that our parents do not understand. Just think of how many new words the information age of the 21st century has given us.
        
        If some people are still not convinced that language is exclusive to humans, the following question should be asked: Why would there be so many bi-/multilingual people while no one has ever met an elephant that speaks “monkey”?
        In conclusion, a few additional considerations related to language matters: The brain is divided into two cognitively functioning hemispheres, namely the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere. Each hemisphere deals with information differently. The left side of the brain controls the rational, analytic and logical functions, while the right side of the brain houses the intuitive, emotional and creative functions. The left hemisphere of our brains is associated with the functions of language production. If any part of the left hemisphere suffered damage, it would result in some form of language loss or dysfunction.
        It is also interesting to note that the ability of hearing sounds is not a prerequisite for learning a language. Read the story of Helen Keller, who was both deaf and blind, or speak to a parent who has a child with a severe hearing or visual impairment. Such children can learn to sign or read braille in the same stages and with the same ease as hearing and sighted children acquire their spoken language. These examples suggest that all languages have common, universal properties. All languages comprise complex and highly developed systems. No single language can thus be classed as inferior or superior to another. At times in our world history, some languages were more useful or carried more prestige than others, e.g., Latin or English today. However, the language's inherent properties are not significant in this regard but rather economic or political issues of the day. So, as we have argued in the preceding section, it is necessary to ask the following question: If language is an exclusively human trait, what was the first language the first humans spoke, and why are there so many languages currently?
  - - - Many fables and religious writings try to explain how language came into being. We ask what language Adam and Eve spoke to each other. We often also wonder how they could have named the animals in Paradise without language? The Babylonians declared Nabu the giver of language, while an Egyptian myth tells of Thoth as the creator of speech and writing. Hindu tradition claims that the goddess Sarasvati, wife of Brahma – creator of the universe – gave humans speech. Such theories are classed as divine source theories (Yule, 2006). This school of thought is linked to the monogenetic theory that explains why so many different languages are spoken worldwide. The story of a tower built in Babel and the confusion caused by the divine powers who were displeased is well-known in many cultures (Crystal, 2010).
      - Many other theories exist. Some suggest that as humans evolved and no longer needed their arms to swing and jump from branch to branch, an elaborate gesturing system evolved as part of their early communication. However, since no one could use gestures in the dark while carrying a weapon or tool or while trying to negotiate one’s way through jungle undergrowth, humans discovered their voices as means of communicating. Some speculate that as ancient humans discovered how to use tools, they figured out how to store food. Therefore, they did not have to spend much time hunting and gathering. There were thus more extended periods between meals.
      - Consequently, they had more time to put their mouths to other uses. Some believe people imitated sounds they heard in their natural environment, especially animal calls, which developed into speech. They named the objects by using the sounds the objects made, and others speculated that people made instinctive sounds caused by pain/disgust/anger or emotional pleasure. The yo-he-ho theory claims that their physical efforts produced communal, rhythmical grunts and groans as people worked together. These sounds they made as they toiled or hunted in the jungles came to have meaning among themselves and developed into chants and eventually language (Barber, 1972). Think of some of the songs labourers or miners sing, e.g., Shosholoza.
      - The physical adaptation theory claims that humans' physical features make speech possible. These features include the human’s ability to walk upright, our particular system for inhaling and exhaling air, and our unique facial muscles, tongue, teeth, lips, and mouth shape. Humans breathe, chew and swallow differently from other primates that generally have long, thin tongues, a higher larynx, no pharynx and a distinctly different vocal tract. These physical differences thus do not allow them to produce speech (Yule, 2006).
      - The innateness hypothesis or the genetic source theory is a theory that holds currency. This theorem postulates that human speech came about due to genetic capacity – a language gene only humans have in their DNA.
      - As far back as the 7th century BC, kings and emperors tried to establish how language originated or what the first language was. Many “research” experiments – which would be considered highly unethical in today’s academic world – were performed. Newborns were given foster mothers who were instructed only to care for them and not speak to them. The babies were monitored closely to discover what language they would produce when they first spoke. James IV of Scotland (1473–1513) took a mute woman and left two children in her care. The aim was also to discover what language the children would speak if they had never heard any language. Similar experiments were done with babies who were placed among goats, completely isolated from any human linguistic input (Crystal, 2010).
      - Readers may recall the story of Romulus and Remus, the twins who allegedly were cared for by a she-wolf. Tarzan and Mowgli are fictitious boy-child characters who also grew up with wild animals as their only companions. Since time immemorial, there have been reports about humans being found living with animals and behaving and sounding like them. Children who have grown up in the wild, isolated from human contact, are called feral children. Their parents usually abandoned them for some reason. The earliest recorded case of such a child dates back to 1344 in Germany. Other cases that raised much interest were Victor, the wild boy of Aveyron (1798), who grew up in a forest on his own and had never learnt to speak; Kamala and Amala (1920) were looked after by wolves in Bengal, and more recently in 1973, John, the ape boy of Burundi, was found walking on all fours and making ape-like movements when confronted. In 2000, a young wild boy was found wandering in the hills of KwaZulu-Natal.
      - The discovery of “attic children” regularly shocks the world. These children are abused and deprived in several ways by unfit adults. They are usually kept hidden in small, dark places such as cupboards, holes in the ground or even chicken coups or barns. Some indirect evidence regarding inadequate language acquisition exists from the research done by observing children who have grown up with insufficient human language input or persons with speech defects.
      - So finally, researchers are still not in agreement about the origin of human language. However, they have systematically identified similarities and differences between various languages and established commonalities over the generations. This process has helped them show the relationship between languages and how they can be grouped into language families. For example, French, Spanish and Italian belong to the Romance language family and have evolved from Latin as an original source. Today there is sufficient evidence to support the supposition that a parent language once existed: Proto-Indo-European. It is thought that this language already existed before 3 000 BC. Languages belonging to this family have been spoken throughout Europe and many parts of southern Asia for many centuries. Both English and Afrikaans have Germanic roots and fall into the Indo-European language family, while the other nine official South African languages belong to the Bantu language family.
      - For more detail on the theories described in this section, read up on the work of Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), a Danish linguist.