The arbitrary nature of the linguistic signs, its double articulation and its consequent productivity enable verbal language to have a functional potential that is qualitatively different and superior to that of other languages that lack these characteristics. Verbal language has numerous distinctive features. Arbitrariness of its units and structures: lack of direct relationship (natural and/or analogical) between the signs that make up the linguistic system and its referents. Almost absolute independence of grammatical rules and principles with respect to the social cognitive functions performed by linguistic forms.
Each social or cultural community It has a conventional system of signs, as well as the grammatical rules that govern their combination and use. This gives rise to cultural concretions other than language, which we call languages. These constitute particular cases or manifestations of the language whose specific units and grammar, being arbitrary, must be learned by speakers within the framework of the interactions they maintain with other speakers of their linguistic community or culture.
That’s why Hockett He also points out as a characteristic feature of human language the feature called the feature of transmission by tradition. The origin and evolution of languages, the differences that exist between them in the way they designate and categorize reality and their repercussions on thought, have given rise to divergent theoretical positions. Von Humboldt, Cassirer or the hypothesis of determinism linguistic or cultural relativism of Sapiro and Whorf, they accentuate the constitutive function of the object that language fulfills; All of these authors, therefore, refuse to interpret language as a sign system that operates as a mere copy of reality independently of the subject who knows it. “…, the difference in languages comes less from the difference in sounds and signs than from conceptions of the world.” Languages have numerous common formal characteristics:
- In all of them, basic units such as sounds or words can be identified.
- In all of them there are rules to combine sounds and words and form more complex units such as sentences and texts.
- In all of them there are restrictions regarding the order in which different words can form sentences.
- In all of them the sentences express contents that seem to fit a predicative or propositional structure.
The existence of regularities and similarities like these in all languages, but not in other animal communication systems, has given rise to postulate the hypothesis that certain properties Language formalities are universal and define specific features of the cognitive abilities and potentialities of the human species. Noam Chomsky defines universal grammar as capable of identifying and establishing, at a high level of abstraction, the parameters common to different particular grammars and would constitute first-order evidence to affirm that human linguistic capacity has an important biological basis and is, therefore, so much, innate.
Focusing our attention on the characteristics Of the linguistic signals themselves, it should be noted above all that the most primary modality of human language (the oral modality) requires the participation of two channels, the vocal and the auditory, which implies that the users of this language must meet a certain both anatomical and functional requirements and conditions. The physical characteristics of language sounds (amplitude, frequency and duration) can be seen as related to certain peculiarities of the anatomical configuration of the speech apparatus in the human species, such as the position of the epiglottis. Other linguistic modalities, such as reading and writing or manual sign languages, rely on the visual and motor channels.
From the point of view of the physical properties of linguist speech signals, the acoustic signal expands multidirectionally and fades quickly. The sign is displayed continuously although in reality, the linguistic units are discrete. For the compression of language, the participation of memory systems capable of temporarily storing and integrating the information transmitted through the physical signal will be necessary and that allow its processing once it has faded; Likewise, the existence of processes that allow the segmentation of physical signals into linguistically significant units will be essential. The internal structure of linguistic units has other characteristics: double articulation or duality of patterns, which refers to the fact that the linguistic system is composed of two types of units: non-meaningful units (phonemes) and units with meaning (morphemes, words, etc) that result from the combination, under the conditions established by the grammar, of the previous ones.
Linguistic systems that participate in the characteristics of pattern duality turn out to be highly productive, open and flexible. This in turn makes it easier for users of the language to use it creatively. A set of principles or formal rules that enable the production and understanding of infinite grammatical sentences from a finite number of units was originally established by Chomsky and constitutes one of the basic principles of modern linguistics. This author distinguished between deep structure (conceptual relationships encoded in the message) and surface structure (linguistic units that appear explicitly in said message).
This division is extremely useful for the psychological explanation of how language is understood and produced and allows us to understand, among other things, the existence of paraphrases. The units that are relevant from the point of view of the construction of linguistic meaning in verbal messages – phonemes, words, etc. – are units that admit a discontinuous graphic representation or discreet. These units, as Osgood highlights, have a hierarchical and componential internal organization.
They can always be analyzed and described based on lower level units. The combination of these units is not random: it is governed by principles or rules that are included in the particular grammars of each language. In the case of the oral modality, it is possible to identify other parameters of the organization of the messages, which have a suprasegmental and continuous nature: these are the prosodic parameters of the voice that correspond to the volume, intonation, timbre and rhythm of speech. These parameters carry a large amount of emotional and pragmatic information, which makes them very relevant both from the point of view of the study of emotional expression and the study of the use of the language in conversational context.
Functional Characteristics of Verbal Language
This potentiality modulates the capacity for (emotional) expression of humans, but it also modulates and enables a particularly complex and distinctive development of the other two basic functions of language identified by Bühler: the representational or symbolic function and the communicative function.
Characteristics of the Representational Function
From a representational point of view, the particular combinatorial quality of verbal language can be related to numerous characteristics of the human species.
First of all (Hockett and Altmann), verbal language presents the characteristic called reference displacement or situational posture. Linguistic signs are not necessarily or directly linked to referents immediately present in time in space, and can therefore refer to present, past or future, real or imaginary, aspects of reality.
Paulov explained that in humans, language does not operate so much as a system of primary signals but as a second system of signals that results from the generalization of the links or associations of the first system of signals. The possibility of generalization offered by verbal language is supported by the analysis of meaning and determines forms of reaction and response to the environment that are qualitatively superior as an adaptation mechanism to an environment as flexible and variable as the human social environment.
The situational opening or referential displacement, as well as the character of the second signal system of human language, free language and its uses from concrete and immediate physical reality and allow it to operate as a general-purpose representational system. Language can be interpreted as a code not linked to specific content, states or needs that, at the same time, enables particular forms of knowledge of reality that are presumably specific to our species.
To the extent that signs can be created and used in our species to account for meanings not linked to immediate reality, language expands its representational functionality in a practically unlimited way. For example, human language can be applied to describe and analyze the very activity of “saying.” This trait is known as the reflexivity trait and gives rise to the metalinguistic knowledge. The possibility of analyzing one’s own behavior through language constitutes the germ of reflective consciousness and self-control behavior, undoubtedly two of the most precious functional achievements of our species.
Human language operates as a second signal system, that is, it does not directly represent or indicate reality but rather represents mental representations that subjects have and construct about that reality (meanings). Linguistic signs imply meanings constructed through principles of generalization and individualization, which must be known and shared by both the sender and the recipient. Linguistic signs are and exist as such insofar as they are signs constructed “by someone and for someone”; also that its use involves both simple coding and decoding processes and interpretation processes that, without a doubt, are unthinkable outside the scope of our species.
Language not only designates things, it not only fulfills the representational referential function: at the same time that it presents them to us, language also describes things to us and informs us about how they are, describes their properties and, consequently, qualifies the same reality that it represents: in this sense, we can say that language is a analytical representation system.
The representational function of language It has many other supposedly characteristic and specific features:
- The frequent ambiguity of linguistic statements
- The existence of connotations that modulate the literal or conventional meaning of words depending on the experience and personal or sociocultural biases of the speakers
- The possibility of saying, through language, something false that does not correspond to reality (prevarication)
- The possibility of constructing messages that transmit…