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This article is about the properties of language in general. For other uses, see Language (disambiguation).
Cuneiform is one of the first known forms of written language, but spoken language is believed to predate writing by tens of thousands of years at least.
Language portal
A language is a particular kind of system for encoding and decoding information. Since language and languages became an object of study (logos) by the ancient grammarians, the term has had many definitions. .The English word derives from Latin lingua, "language, tongue," with a reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root of *dnghû-, "tongue," a metaphor based on the use of the physical organ in speech.^ Good Morning or so Zach, you may excuse my English and even the way I like to express myself, because I might using the wrong words.
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 [1] The ability to use speech originated in remote prehistoric times, as did the language families in use at the beginning of writing. The processes by which they were acquired were for the most part unconscious.
In modern times, a large number of artificial languages have been devised, requiring a distinction between their consciously innovated type and natural language. The latter are forms of communication considered peculiar to humankind. .Although some other animals make use of quite sophisticated communicative systems, and these are sometimes casually referred to as animal language, none of these are known to make use of all the properties that linguists use to define language.^ I mean, if our dogs eat that stuff, and I know they use all the parts of animals these days for all sorts of stuff, what goes into the foods we eat.
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 ^ Some friends and I were just talking about how crappy it would be to be a celeb right now cause the media is in a frenzy to make fun of all of you.
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 ^ You have to come down here sometime and see this beautiful place and buy some land, maybe stay awhile heheh Have just sat and read through all your recent Posts, you make me smile.
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The term “language” has branched by analogy into several meanings.[1] The most obvious manifestations are spoken languages such as English or Spoken Chinese. However, there are also written languages and other systems of visual symbols such as sign languages. In cognitive science the term is also sometimes extended to refer to the human cognitive facility of creating and using language. Essential to both meanings is the systematic creation and usage of systems of symbols, each pairing a specific sign with an intended meaning, established through social conventions.[2]
In the 20th century Charles Sanders Peirce called this pairing process semiosis and the study of it semiotics.[3] According to another founder of semiotics, Roman Jakobson, the latter portrays language as code in which sounds (signantia) signify concepts (signata).[4] Language is the process of encoding signata in the sounds forming the signantia and decoding from signantia to signata.
Concepts themselves are signantia for the objective reality being conceived. .When discussed as a general phenomenon then, "language" may imply a particular type of human thought that can be present even when communication is not the result, and this way of thinking is also sometimes treated as indistinguishable from language itself.^ Sometimes the best way to consume an art form, and even sometimes brussel sprouts, is in one big gulp.
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 ^ Good Morning or so Zach, you may excuse my English and even the way I like to express myself, because I might using the wrong words.
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 ^ It may be the best one yet, even thought i have a feeling that Kim and J.D. gets married but, =X. Well, what can i say.
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 In Western philosophy, language has long been closely associated with reason, which is also a uniquely human way of using symbols. In Ancient Greek philosophical terminology, the same word, logos, was a term for both language or speech and reason, and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes used the English word "speech" so that it similarly could refer to reason, as presented below.

Contents

The properties of language

Main article: semiotics

Arbitrary symbols

A key property of language is that its symbols are arbitrary.[5] Any concept or grammatical rule can be mapped onto a symbol. .In other words, most languages make use of sound, but the combinations of sounds used do not have any necessary and inherent meaning; they are merely an agreed-upon convention to represent a certain thing by users of that language.^ I mean, if our dogs eat that stuff, and I know they use all the parts of animals these days for all sorts of stuff, what goes into the foods we eat.
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 ^ I have all the songs from every episode and the songs you suggest because they make me feel really good and I like the way they sound.
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 ^ I mean it is just words, are you really that worried about what they say.
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 For instance, the sound combination nada carries the meaning of "nothing" in the Spanish language and also the meaning "thread" in the Hindi language. .There is nothing about the word nada itself that forces Hindi speakers to convey the idea of "thread", or the idea of "nothing" for Spanish speakers.^ I was once at a cafe and a man came up to me and stood there watching me, saying nothing for about 5 (extremely long) minutes.
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 ^ For many reasons, he feels scared about his birthday, he's no longer young, there's nothing to look forward to be legal for, etc.
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 .Other sets of sounds (for example, the English words nothing and thread) could equally be used to represent the same concepts, but all Spanish and Hindi speakers have acquired or learned to correlate their own meanings for this particular sound pattern.^ Good Morning or so Zach, you may excuse my English and even the way I like to express myself, because I might using the wrong words.
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 ^ Massive fan of scrubs, all the box sets, well stupid english tv doesn't show them in order so you have to get the dvds to make sense of it.
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 Indeed, for speakers of Slovene and some other South Slavic languages, the sound combination carries the meaning of "hope", while in Indonesian, it means "tone".
This arbitrariness applies to words even with an onomatopoetic dimension (i.e. words that to some extent simulate the sound of the token referred to). For example, several animal names (e.g. .cuckoo, whip-poor-will, and katydid) are derived from sounds made by the respective animal, but these forms did not have to be chosen for these meanings.^ I mean, if our dogs eat that stuff, and I know they use all the parts of animals these days for all sorts of stuff, what goes into the foods we eat.
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 .Non-onomatopoetic words can stand just as easily for the same meaning.^ I mean it is just words, are you really that worried about what they say.
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 ^ I don't like having crushes on stars but you are just too damn cute for words, I can't stand it!
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 For instance, the katydid is called a "bush cricket" in British English, a term that bears no relation to the sound made by the animal. In time, onomatopoetic words can also change in form, losing their mimetic status. .Onomatopoetic words may have an inherent relation to their referent, but this meaning is not inherent; thus they do not violate arbitrariness.^ I mean it is just words, are you really that worried about what they say.
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Related symbols

.The meanings of signs may be arbitrary, but the process of assigning meaning is not; it is the activity of the entire society; individuals are not allowed to change them arbitrarily, even though they may contribute some new meanings.^ Even though you still have some king of link with then i have to say they have lost their minds...
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 ^ I would like to get a new one xP Well, anyway, even if this is or not the last season of scrubs, I hope here in Chile we get some new movies of you!
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 ^ Sure they drive like maniacs, but so do I! (though with some recent car damage need to calm down...
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 A continuous thread of socially recognized meaning requires that the allowed meanings of individual signs be related. The relatedness of signs was formally recognized by Charles W. Morris, who divided semiotics into three fields, based on "the three dimensions of semiosis:"[6]
"...syntactics studies the relation between a given sign vehicle and other sign vehicles, semantics studies the relations between sign vehicles and their designata, and pragmatics studies the relation between sign vehicles and their interpreters....
These types of relatedness allow a finite set of signs to be combined into a potentially infinite number of meaningful utterances.

The study of language

The history of linguistics

Main article: History of linguistics
The historical record of linguistics begins in India with Pāṇini, the 5th century BC grammarian who formulated 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology, known as the Aṣṭādhyāyī (अष्टाध्यायी) and with Tolkāppiyar, the 2nd century BC grammarian of the Tamil work Tolkāppiyam (தொல்காப்பியம்).[7] Pāṇini’s grammar is highly systematized and technical. Inherent in its analytic approach are the concepts of the phoneme, the morpheme, and the root; Western linguists recognized the phoneme only some two millennia later.[8] Tolkāppiyar's work is perhaps the first to describe articulatory phonetics for a language. Its classification of the alphabet into consonants and vowels, and elements such as nouns, verbs, vowels, and consonants, which he put into classes, was also a breakthrough at the time. In the Middle East, the linguist Sibawayh (سیبویه) made a detailed and professional description of Arabic in 760 AD in his monumental work, Al-kitab fi al-nahw (الكتاب في النحو, The Book on Grammar), bringing many linguistic aspects of language to light. In his book, he distinguished phonetics from phonology.
.In the west, interest in the study of languages was equally as ancient as it was in the east,[9] but the grammarians of the classical languages did not utilize the same methods or reach the same conclusions as did their unknown contemporaries in the Indic world.^ Im actually studying performing arts and next month we are doing directors season and i have been wanting to do something that has the same effect on people as your piece did on me.
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 By the 16th century, the study of language was subsumed under the topic of philology, practiced by such educators as Roger Ascham, Wolfgang Ratke and John Amos Comenius.[10] Substantial progress was not made in linguistics until Sanskrit literature became available to western scholars through the window of British India in the 18th century. .The combination of eastern and western linguistics resulted in the rise of Indo-European linguistics and the first use of the comparative method by William Jones, Friedrich Schlegel, Franz Bopp, August Friedrich Pott, August Schleicher and others.^ I miss the strolls through Harlem I used to take when my husband and I were first courting each other.
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 [11] .Bloomfield attributes "the first great scientific linguistic work of the world" to Jacob Grimm, who wrote Deutsche Grammatik.^ Who first discovered that they make great chew toys for dogs?
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 ^ Just point and case, you do great work, and I am sorry it has taken me so long to really notice, and appreciate your contribution to the world of acting.
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 [12] It was soon followed by other authors writing similar comparative studies on other language groups of Europe. The scientific study of language was broadened from Indo-European to language in general by Wilhelm von Humboldt, of whom Bloomfield asserts:[13]
"This study received its foundation at the hands of the Prussian statesman and scholar Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767—1835), especially in the first volume of his work on Kavi, the literary language of Java, entitled Über die Verschiedenheit desmenschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts ('On the Variety of the Structure of Language and its Influence upon the Mental Development of the Human Race')."
Early in the 20th century, Ferdinand de Saussure introduced the idea of language as a "semantic code".[14] Substantial additional contributions similar to this came from Hjelmslev, Émile Benveniste and Roman Jakobson,[15] which are characterized as being highly systematic.[15]

Language and culture

Main article: Language and culture in Culture
The connection between the human capacities for culture and language has been noted as far back as classical antiquity. As language and culture are both in essence symbolic systems, 20th century cultural theorists have applied the methods of analyzing language developed in the science of linguistics to also analyze culture.

History of concepts of the origin of language

Ancient Tamil inscription at the Brihadeeswara Temple in Thanjavur
Main article: Origin of language
.Even before the theory of evolution made discussion of more animal-like human ancestors commonplace, philosophical and scientific speculation on the function of language in man was frequent throughout history.^ Even though I really have nothing to say, like most of the 400 something people before me, I feel this compelling need to leave a post.
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 ^ Everyone on your show seems to have great chemistry, and that makes me like it even more.
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 ^ That episode, at the risk of sounding like a wuss, made me tear up a bit more than the average episode does.
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 Aristotle, for example, believed that language was part of the intrinsic nature of man, related to their natural propensities to be "political," which in Greek meant to dwell in city-state communities (Greek: poleis):[16]
"Hence it is evident that the state is a creature of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal ... man is the only animal whom she has endowed with the power of speech ... the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and likewise the just and unjust. .And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, ...^ Just to tell you that it's a pleasure to see someone so refreshing and ordinary (in the good sense) and to encourage you to keep working in the cinema: it's a success!
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 ^ New York rox :) where I live haha just droping a line supporrtin your work have a good day man .
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 and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state."
.Thomas Hobbes, followed by John Locke and others, said that language is an extension of the "speech" that humans have within themselves as part of reason, one of the most primary characteristics of human nature.^ One reason being that you're a good on screen kisser just like shia lebouf and some others.
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 ^ I find the most rewarding plays are those which offer truth and show human nature as it is.
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 ^ It could be about every single one of us %u2013 just human beings %u2013 and that is just one reason I love it.
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 Hobbes in Leviathan while postulating as did Aristotle that language is a prerequisite for society, attributed it to innovation and learning after an initial impulse by God:[17]
But the most noble and profitable invention of all others was that of speech ... whereby men register their thoughts, recall them when they are past, and also declare them to one another for mutual utility and conversation; without which there had been amongst men neither commonwealth, nor society, nor contract, nor peace, no more than amongst lions, bears and wolves. .The first author of speech was God himself, that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as He presented to his sight; for the Scripture goeth no further in this matter."^ No matter how much you spend if it doesn't fit right it will suck.
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 ^ Not to mention that SOUNDTRACK. I mean my god, how does one guy come up with such great stuff.
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In Hobbes, man proceeds to learn on his own initiative all the words not taught by God: "figures, numbers, measures, colours ...." which are taught by "need, the mother of all inventions." Hobbes, one of the first rationalists of the Age of Reason, identifies the ability of self-instruction as reason:[18]
"For reason, in this sense, is nothing but reckoning ... of the consequences of general names agreed upon for the marking and signifying of our thoughts; ...."
.Others have argued the opposite, that reason developed out of the need for more complex communication.^ CRAZYY. the only lyrics you can really hear are "it's just the same as it ever was, what you need is a little more love" i've googled it, i've asked friends, i can't figure it out.
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 ^ I just found out from E! News (which has got to be one of the best shows ever, complete celebrity gossip, what more do you need??
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 Rousseau, despite writing[19] before the publication of Darwin's theory of evolution, said that there had once been humans with no language or reason who developed language first, rather than reason, the development of which he explicitly described as a mixed blessing, with many negative characteristics.
.Since the arrival of Darwin, the subject has been approached more often by scientists than philosophers.^ (Since I am from Sweden I can say that you neighbour is more likely Norweigan or Swedish than Danish.
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 ^ So, I'm pretty sure that my TV is set on Scrubs more often than not.
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 ^ We would love to give you the grand tour and since you are according to you blog, doing a lot of dating you are more than welcome to bring a guest along.
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 For example, neurologist Terrence Deacon in his Symbolic Species has argued that reason and language "coevolved." Merlin Donald sees language as a later development building upon what he refers to as mimetic culture,[20] emphasizing that this coevolution depended upon the interactions of many individuals. He writes:
.A shared communicative culture, with sharing of mental representations to some degree, must have come first, before language, creating a social environment in which language would have been useful and adaptive.^ I like that you used the word "fellow" I've been trying forever hoping that it would become more maintstream and therefore useful in everything language.
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 ^ Also, as Scrubs is coming to an end, I have a suggestion which I think many fans would enjoy: Could you do some kind of crossover episode with "My Name is Earl"?
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 [21]
.The specific causes of the natural selection that led to language are, however, still the subject of much speculation, but a common theme going back to Aristotle is that many theories propose that the gains to be had from language and/or reason were probably mainly in the area of increasingly sophisticated social structures.^ Hope you still acting many years ^^ Kisses From Spain P.D: Your role in scrubs reminds me to myself sooooo much jajajaja .
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 ^ Yet I still can't wait to go back and recapture those few moments where I was filled with love for the best city in the world.
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In more recent times, a theory of mirror neurons has emerged in relation to language. .Ramachandran[22] has gone so far as to argue that "mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments". Mirror neurons are located in the human inferior frontal cortex and superior parietal lobe, and are unique in that they fire when one completes an action and also when one witnesses an actor performing the same action.^ It's killing me I Keeping sing it over and Over to others and they give me you are in need on mental help look!ekkkkk!
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 ^ These humanity-based works are the ones which lead to self discovery for audience and of course actor.
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 ^ Did you write the one where they're kicking trees?
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 Various studies have proposed a theory of mirror neurons related to language development.[23][24][25]

Natural languages

Main article: Natural language
Some of the areas of the brain involved in language processing: Broca's area (Blue), Wernicke's area (Green), Supramarginal gyrus (Yellow), Angular gyrus (Orange), Primary Auditory Cortex (Pink)
Human languages are usually referred to as natural languages, and the science of studying them falls under the purview of linguistics. .A common progression for natural languages is that they are considered to be first spoken and then written, and then an understanding and explanation of their grammar is attempted.^ Consider yourself special, this is the first blog posting I've ever written and I am quickly seeing that I'm rather wordy - apologies!
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.Languages live, die, move from place to place, and change with time.^ I'm going to thank you for giving me a place to escape, a place to laugh, a world apart from the one I live in in a difficult time.
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 Any language that ceases to change or develop is categorized as a dead language. Conversely, any language that is in a continuous state of change is known as a living language or modern language.
.Making a principled distinction between one language and another is sometimes nearly impossible.^ It is syndicated on about 3 different channels that all fall perfectly one after another on the weeknights, so between all of the other goob and bad (mostly bad...
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 [26] For instance, there are a few dialects of German similar to some dialects of Dutch. The transition between languages within the same language family is sometimes gradual (see dialect continuum).
.Some like to make parallels with biology, where it is not possible to make a well-defined distinction between one species and the next.^ But when some one is famous, suddenly it seems like such a horrible thing to do.
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 ^ I would like to get a new one xP Well, anyway, even if this is or not the last season of scrubs, I hope here in Chile we get some new movies of you!
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 ^ You speak of dating, well i just might fly to new york from sunny passagrille beach florida and become one of your next dates!
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 In either case, the ultimate difficulty may stem from the interactions between languages and populations. (See Dialect or August Schleicher for a longer discussion.)
The concepts of Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache and Dachsprache are used to make finer distinctions about the degrees of difference between languages or dialects.

Artificial languages

Constructed languages

Main article: Constructed language
Some individuals and groups have constructed their own artificial languages, for practical, experimental, personal or ideological reasons. .International auxiliary languages are generally constructed languages that strive to be easier to learn than natural languages; other constructed languages strive to be more logical ("loglangs") than natural languages; a prominent example of this is Lojban.^ Someday I really hope that I get to meet you, because you seem like you're more down to earth than other celebrities.
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Some writers, such as J. R. R. Tolkien, have created fantasy languages, for literary, artistic or personal reasons. The fantasy language of the Klingon race has in recent years been developed by fans of the Star Trek series, including a vocabulary and grammar.
Constructed languages are not necessarily restricted to the properties shared by natural languages.
This part of ISO 639 also includes identifiers that denote constructed (or artificial) languages. In order to qualify for inclusion, the language must have a literature and be designed for the purpose of human communication. Specifically excluded are reconstructed languages and computer programming languages.

International auxiliary languages

Main article: International auxiliary language
.Some languages, most constructed, are meant specifically for communication between people of different nationalities or language groups as an easy-to-learn second language.^ Most people who have never been there assume this wonderful city is filled with homeless people and hookers ( which it is but there really are some amazing people there).
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 Several of these languages have been constructed by individuals or groups. .Natural, pre-existing languages may also be used in this way; their developers merely catalogued and standardized their vocabulary and identified their grammatical rules.^ Good Morning or so Zach, you may excuse my English and even the way I like to express myself, because I might using the wrong words.
  • : : : ZACHBRAFF : : : - Hi there. 18 January 2010 6:33 UTC www.zachbraff.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 These languages are called naturalistic. One such language, Latino Sine Flexione, is a simplified form of Latin. Two others, Occidental and Novial, were drawn from several Western languages.
To date, the most successful auxiliary language is Esperanto, invented by Polish ophthalmologist Zamenhof. .It has a relatively large community roughly estimated at about two million speakers worldwide, with a large body of literature, songs, and is the only known constructed language to have native speakers, such as the Hungarian-born American businessman George Soros.^ I can only say that about one other actor (okay, maybe two).
  • : : : ZACHBRAFF : : : - Hi there. 18 January 2010 6:33 UTC www.zachbraff.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ We would not only entertain you with the Ugly Lamp contest but with the community at large.
  • : : : ZACHBRAFF : : : - Hi there. 18 January 2010 6:33 UTC www.zachbraff.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 Other auxiliary languages with a relatively large number of speakers and literature are Interlingua and Ido.

Controlled languages

Main article: Controlled natural language
Controlled natural languages are subsets of natural languages whose grammars and dictionaries have been restricted in order to reduce or eliminate both ambiguity and complexity. The purpose behind the development and implementation of a controlled natural language typically is to aid non-native speakers of a natural language in understanding it, or to ease computer processing of a natural language. An example of a widely used controlled natural language is Simplified English, which was originally developed for aerospace industry maintenance manuals.

Formal languages

Main article: Formal language
.Mathematics and computer science use artificial entities called formal languages (including programming languages and markup languages, and some that are more theoretical in nature).^ I like that you used the word "fellow" I've been trying forever hoping that it would become more maintstream and therefore useful in everything language.
  • : : : ZACHBRAFF : : : - Hi there. 18 January 2010 6:33 UTC www.zachbraff.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 These often take the form of character strings, produced by a combination of formal grammar and semantics of arbitrary complexity.

Programming languages

Main article: Programming language
A programming language is a formal language endowed with semantics that can be utilized to control the behavior of a machine, particularly a computer, to perform specific tasks. Programming languages are defined using syntactic and semantic rules, to determine structure and meaning respectively.
Programming languages are employed to facilitate communication about the task of organizing and manipulating information, and to express algorithms precisely. .Some authors restrict the term "programming language" to those languages that can express all possible algorithms; sometimes the term "computer language" is applied to artificial languages that are more limited.^ Sometimes, I like to see more than one, but I always pay for all of them.
  • : : : ZACHBRAFF : : : - Hi there. 18 January 2010 6:33 UTC www.zachbraff.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ But im pretty sure all those people driving sports were just jealous that I could take more people with me to go bowling.
  • : : : ZACHBRAFF : : : - Hi there. 18 January 2010 6:33 UTC www.zachbraff.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

Animal communication

Main article: Animal language
The term "animal languages" is often used for non-human systems of communication. Linguists do not consider these to be "language", but describe them as animal communication, because the interaction between animals in such communication is fundamentally different in its underlying principles from human language.[citation needed] Nevertheless, some scholars have tried to disprove this mainstream premise through experiments on training chimpanzees to talk. Karl von Frisch received the Nobel Prize in 1973 for his proof of the language and dialects of the bees.[27] Current research indicates that signalling codes are the most fundamental precondition for every coordination within and between cells, tissues, organs and organisms of all organismic kingdoms. All of these signalling codes follow combinatorial (syntactic), context-sensitive (pragmatic) and content-specific (semantic) rules. In contrast to linguists, biolinguistics and biosemiotics consider these codes to be real languages.[28]
In several publicized instances, non-human animals have been taught to understand certain features of human language. Chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans have been taught hand signs based on American Sign Language. The African Grey Parrot, which possesses the ability to mimic human speech with a high degree of accuracy, is suspected of having sufficient intelligence to comprehend some of the speech it mimics. Most species of parrot, despite expert mimicry, are believed to have no linguistic comprehension at all.[citation needed]
While proponents of animal communication systems have debated levels of semantics, these systems have not been found to have anything approaching human language syntax.

Notes

  1. ^ a b "language". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (3rd ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1992. 
  2. ^ Saussure 1983, p. 32.
  3. ^ Nöth 1995, pp. 13, 50.
  4. ^ Nöth 1995, p. 239
  5. ^ Saussure 1983, p. 67.
  6. ^ Nöth 1995, p. 50.
  7. ^ Zvelebil 1973, p. 40. Zvelebil dates the Ur-Tolkappiyam to the late 2nd BC.
  8. ^ Barton, David. Literacy: an introduction to the ecology of written language. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. p. 122. 
  9. ^ Bloomfield 1914, p. 307.
  10. ^ Bloomfield 1914, p. 308.
  11. ^ Bloomfield 1914, p. 310.
  12. ^ Bloomfield 1914, p. 311.
  13. ^ Bloomfield 1914, p. 311.
  14. ^ Clarke, David S. (1990). Sources of semiotic: readings with commentary from antiquity to the present. Southern Illinois University Press. pp. 143-144. 
  15. ^ a b Holquist 1981, pp. xvii-xviii.
  16. ^ Politics, 1253a lines 1-18 (Book I.2)
  17. ^ Hobbes 1651, pp. 16-17.
  18. ^ Hobbes 1651, p. 24.
  19. ^ Second Discourse
  20. ^ Evolutionary Origins of the Social Brain. In O. Vilarroya and F. F. i Argimon (eds.), Social Brain Matters: Stances on the Neurobiology of Social Cognition. Rodopi, 2007, 18: 215-222.
  21. ^ Imitation and Mimesis. In S. Hurley and N. Chater (eds.), Perspectives on Imitation: From Neuroscience to Social Science, Volume 2: Imitation, Human Development, and Culture. MIT Press, 2005, 14:282-300.
  22. ^ http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/ramachandran_p1.html
  23. ^ http://psycserver.psyc.queensu.ca/donaldm/reprints/evolutionaryOrigins18.pdf
  24. ^ http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=uJTc5wlAYAUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA229&dq=Arbib+From+grasping+to+complex+imitation:+mirror+systems+on+the+path+to+language&ots=-b6u5FyQbC&sig=yupQRSaXgn43CcBKuJImHqXspwg
  25. ^ http://www3.isrl.uiuc.edu/~junwang4/langev/localcopy/pdf/christiansen03trends.pdf
  26. ^ "Language". The New Encyclopædia Britannica: MACROPÆDIA. 22. Encyclopædia Britannica,Inc.. 2005. pp. 548 2b. 
  27. ^ Frisch, K.v. (1953). 'Sprache' oder 'Kommunikation' der Bienen? Psychologische Rundschau 4. Amsterdam.
  28. ^ Witzany, G. (2010). Biocommunication and Natural Genome Editing. Springer, Dordrecht

References

  • Bloomfield, Leonard (1914). An introduction to the study of language. New York: Henry Holt and Company. 
  • Baepler, Paul (2003). "White slaves, African masters". The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 588 (1): 90–111. 
  • Chakrabarti, Byomkes (1994). A comparative study of Santali and Bengali. Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Co. ISBN 81-7074-128-9. 
  • Crystal, David (1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
  • Crystal, David (2001). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
  • Gode, Alexander (1951). Interlingua-English Dictionary. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company. 
  • Hobbes, Thomas (2008) [1651]. Leviathan. Forgotten Books. .http://www.forgottenbooks.org/info/9781605069777. 
  • Holquist, Michael (1981).^ George Michael's character like me you should check this out if you haven't already; http://www.clarkandmichael.com/ it's awesome!!
    • : : : ZACHBRAFF : : : - Hi there. 18 January 2010 6:33 UTC www.zachbraff.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

     "Introduction". in Bachtin, Michail M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin and London: University of Texas Press. http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exbakdia.html#ex1. 
  • Kandel, ER; Schwartz, JH; Jessell, TM (2000). Principles of Neural Science (fourth ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-8385-7701-6. 
  • Katzner, K (1999). The Languages of the World. New York: Routledge. 
  • McArthur, T (1996). The Concise Companion to the English Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
  • Nöth, Winfried (1995). Handbook of semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana Universiy press. 
  • Saussure, Ferdinand de; Harris, Roy, Translator (1983) [1913]. Bally, Charles; Sechehaye, Albert. eds. Course in General Linguistics. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court. ISBN 0-8126-9023-0. 
  • Zvelebil, Kamil (1973). The smile of Murugan on Tamil literature of South India. Leiden: Brill. 

Further reading

  • Deacon, Terrence William (1998). The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-31754-4. 
  • Polinsky, Maria; Comrie, Bernard; Matthews, Stephen (2003). The atlas of languages: the origin and development of languages throughout the world. New York: Facts on File. ISBN 0-8160-5123-2. 
  • Luca Corchia, La logica dei processi culturali. Jürgen Habermas tra filosofia e sociologia, Genova, Edizioni ECIG, 2010, ISBN 978-88-7544-195-1.

See also

Study of language
Types of language and language relationships
Non-spoken forms of communication
Origins of language
Religion and mythology
Education and public policy
Language and culture
Communication with other species
Semiotics
Other

Lists

External links

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Quotes

Up to date as of January 14, 2010

From Wikiquote

Language is the term commonly used for any distinctive means of communication. There are several types of language, including , written language, and oral/aural language (spoken). The study of language is commonly called Linguistics.

Sourced

  • Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.
  • There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. .It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other---by language, which is the parent, and not the ** ** Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I.
  • Verbing weirds language.^ Not only do you take care to do quality work for your own fans but you turn them on to other artist's work as well.
    • : : : ZACHBRAFF : : : - Hi there. 18 January 2010 6:33 UTC www.zachbraff.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]
    • Bill Watterson, Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection (1994), p. 53.
  • Speech is the best show a man puts on.
    • Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, thought and reality (1956), pg. 249.
  • ...a clever Toronto lawyer was deep into a technical argument before the Supreme Court. His position was dependent upon a close reading of the legal text and turned on the letter of the law. Suddenly the chief justice, Beverley McLachlin, leaned forward and asked the counsel if his argument also worked in French. After all, the law is the law in both languages and a loophole in one tends to evaporate in the other. Only an argument of substance stands up. The lawyer had no idea what to reply.
  • In language, the ignorant have prescribed laws to the learned.
    • Richard Duppa (1768-1831), writer and draughtsman. Maxims No. 252 (1830)

Unsourced

  • "Two languages in one head? No-one can live at that speed!";
    "But the Dutch speak four languages and smoke marijuana." --Eddie Izzard
  • "Language is not only an instrument of communication or even of knowledge, but also an instrument of power. One seeks not only to be understood but also to be believed, obeyed, respected, distinguished." --Pierre Bourdieu
  • "He who is ignorant of other languages is ignorant of his own." --Goethe
  • "In the commerce of speech use only coin of gold and silver." --Joseph Joubert
  • "The language denotes the man. A coarse or refined character finds its expression naturally in a coarse or refined phraseology." --Bovee
  • "Language is the picture and counterpart of thought." --Mark Hopkins
  • "Felicity, not fluency, of language is a merit." --Whipple

See also

Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:

Study guide

Up to date as of January 14, 2010

From Wikiversity

This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title. If an internal link referred you to this page, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

1911 encyclopedia

Up to date as of January 14, 2010

From LoveToKnow 1911

LANGUAGE (adapted from the Fr. langage, from langue, tongue, Lat. .lingua), the whole body of words and combinations of words as used in common by a nation, people or race, for the purpose of expressing or communicating their thoughts; also, more widely, the power of expressing thought by verbal utterance.^ Peace in the always easy, perhaps you miss the same wow power levelingtime thought, maybe these friends have more happiness.
  • : : : ZACHBRAFF : : : - Hi there. 18 January 2010 6:33 UTC www.zachbraff.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ Good Morning or so Zach, you may excuse my English and even the way I like to express myself, because I might using the wrong words.
  • : : : ZACHBRAFF : : : - Hi there. 18 January 2010 6:33 UTC www.zachbraff.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 ^ So If there might be something strange and / or I am using the wrong words, feel free to write me an email and just ask what I want to express!
  • : : : ZACHBRAFF : : : - Hi there. 18 January 2010 6:33 UTC www.zachbraff.com [Source type: FILTERED WITH BAYES]

 See generally under Philology, Phonetics, Voice, Writing, Grammar, &c.; and the articles on the various languages, or under headings of countries and races.


Wikibooks

Up to date as of January 23, 2010
(Redirected to Category:Languages article)

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

This category contains books on languages, and the study of individual modern and classical languages forms the backbone of the modern study of the humanities, while the scientific study of language is known as linguistics and is a social science. Since many areas of the humanities such as literature, history, and philosophy are based on language, changes in language can have a profound effect on the other humanities.
Index:   * - A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M - N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z - ~

Related categories

The following 10 related categories may be of interest, out of 10 total.

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B

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Genealogy

Up to date as of February 01, 2010
(Redirected to Category:Multilingualism article)

From Familypedia

  • This site may be browsed in other languages. .Go to preferences and set language.
  • If forms do not display in your language, please help fix this by translating messages into your own language.^ Because being able to translate a foreign word into your language is one thing , but translating the same word in your language into that foreign language is another .

     ^ But don’t go away with the idea that a "two-way" vocabulary means translating words from your mother tongue directly into your target foreign language.

     ^ But if you start by thinking that it is going to be easy , nothing is going to stand in your way of mastering the language.
    • For languages English, العربية, Deutsch, Ελληνικά, Español, Français, and עברית
    • For languages हिन्दी, Italiano, 日本語, 한국어, Nederlands, ‪Norsk (bokmål)‬, and Polski
    • For languages Português, Русский, Suomi, Svenska, Volapük and 中文
If you change any of these, please post a notice at the forum. .If your language does not appear, please request it.^ Despite how you appear, if you divulge your ethnic background people will always ask you if you can speak the language.
  • #91 Multilingualism« Stuff Asian People Like - Asian Central 23 January 2010 12:21 UTC www.asian-central.com [Source type: General]

 ^ The only request I have for you, as I mentioned previously, is to send in your testimonial once you see great results after reading the "Ultimate Language Secrets".

 -~ Phlox 18:05, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Subcategories

This category has the following 4 subcategories, out of 4 total.

M

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Pages in category "Multilingualism"

The following 18 pages are in this category, out of 18 total.

A

  • Familypedia:Multilingual articles
  • Forum:Multilingual articles

F

F cont.

  • Familypedia:Multilingual messages
  • Familypedia:Multilingual messages-UI
  • Familypedia:Multilingual messages-pageB
  • Familypedia:Multilingual messages2
  • Familypedia:Multilingual messages3
  • Familypedia:Wikia tour/Main Page
  • Forum:Dutch and other translators- automatic biographies

F cont.

  • Forum:Multilingual site, or separated: eg: de.genealogy.wikia
  • Forum:Names in non-latin script
  • Forum:The trouble with SMW Ahnentafeln and descendant lists
  • Forum:This Wikia is now multilingual

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Simple English

Language is the chief method of human communication.[1] Of present-day animals, only humans use language, though many others use sounds for communication. The key idea is that true language has syntax, which is a set of rules for connecting words together to make statements and questions. Language may be done by speech or by writing. It follows that language in not just any way of communicating.

Language is a word that may be used by extension:

1. The language of a community or country.
2. The faculty of speech.
3. Formal language in mathematics, logic and computing, such as Cobol or Fortran.
4. Sign language for people who cannot hear.
5. A type of school subject.

Contents

Universals of language

At heart, all languages share certain things which separate them from all other kinds of communication.[2][3]

  1. A language has rules which are shared by a community.
  2. All human languages are based on sound and hearing, or in the case of Sign Language, vision. All the basic sound units, or phonemes, have this in common: they can be spoken by the human voice, and heard by the human ear.
  3. The sounds come out in a sequence, not all at once. This is mimicked in writing, where the marks are put on the paper or screen in the same sequence.
  4. The stream of sounds have little gaps between them, and come in bigger packages. We call the bigger packets sentences or questions or replies or comments.
  5. The order of the sounds is very important: "the cat sat on the man" is different from "the man sat on the cat".
  6. Words (which may be made up of more than one phoneme) divide up into two classes: content and non-content. Contents words have meaning: nouns, verbs &c. Non-content words are there to make the language work: and, not, in, out, what, &c. Grammar consists in studying how words fit together to mean something.
  7. All languages have:
• sentences with two types of expression: nouns and verbs: Jill is here.
• adjectives to modify nouns: good food.
• ways of linking: sink or swim.
• dummy elements: Jill likes to swim, so do I.
• devices to order or ask questions: Get up! Are you ill?

There are many more things in common between languages.[4]

Inheritance

The capacity to learn and use language is inherited. Normally, all humans are born with this capability. Which language is learned by a child depends on which language is spoken by the child's community. So the capacity is inherited, but the particular language is learned. Children have a special period, from about 18 months to about four years, which is critical for learning the language. If this is seriously disrupted, then their language skills will be damaged. Adults find out that, if they learn a second language, it is difficult, and they never speak it as well as they do their native language.

Types of language

Mathematics and computer science use made-up languages called formal languages (like computer programming languages), but these may or may not be 'true' languages. Mathematics itself is considered a language by many. Some people consider musical notation to be a way of writing the musical language.

Chinese is the language with the most native speakers in the world, but remember: Chinese is not one language. It is a close family of dialects, some of which are as different as European languages are from each other. English is often called "the international language". It is the main second language of the world, and the language of science, business, and entertainment.

• English as a first language: 380 million.[5]p108
• English as an official second language: up to 300 million.
• English taught as a second language, but with no official status: anyone's guess, up to 1000 million.
• Chinese (Mandarin): 390 million native speakers.[3]p96[6]

Some languages are made up so that a lot of people around the world can learn them, without the new languages being tied to any specific country or place. One of the most popular of these languages is Esperanto, which is sometimes called "La Internacia Lingvo," or "The International Language." Another one of these languages is called Volapuk, which was popular about a hundred years ago, but is not anymore. It has mostly been replaced by languages like Esperanto, Interlingua, and Ido. Part of the reason it became unpopular is that it is hard to pronounce for people who speak Spanish or English, which are two of the most widely spoken languages in the world.

Other pages

Simple English Wiktionary has the word meaning for:
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References

  1. ↑ Concise Oxford dictionary. p764
  2. ↑ Scalise, Sergio; Magni, Elisabetta; Bisetto, Antonietta (eds) 2009. Universals of language today. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 76. Springer Verlag.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Yuan Ren Chao 1968. Language and symbolic systems. Cambridge.
  4. ↑ Greenberg J.H. (ed) 1966. Universals of language. 2nd ed, MIT Press.
  5. ↑ Crystal, David 1995. The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language. Cambridge.
  6. ↑ 850 million claimed by enWP (en:Chinese language) but without specific reference.
krc:Тилkoi:Кыв

frr:Spräke (iinjtål)rue:Язык

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Citable sentences

Up to date as of December 01, 2010

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