Language

A mural in Teotihuacán, Mexicoc.II), which represents a person emitting a roll of speech from his mouth, which symbolizes speech.

Cuneiform writing is the first known form of written language, but spoken language is prior to writing for at least many tens of thousands of years.

Two girls learning the American sign language.

Braille, a tactile writing system.

A language (from Provencal lenguatge and Latin lingua) is a structured communication system for which there is a context of use and certain formal combinatorial principles. There are both natural and artificial contexts.

From a broader point of view, communication indicates a characteristic common to humans and other animals (non-symbolic animals) to express experiences through the use of signals and sounds registered by the sense organs. Human beings develop a complex symbolic language that is expressed with sound sequences and graphic signs. For their part, animals communicate through sound, olfactory and body signs that in many cases are far from simple.

• The Human language is supported by the ability to communicate through linguistic signs (usually sound sequences and graphic signs, but also with gestures in the case of sign languages). As for its development, human language can be studied from two complementary points of view: ontgeny and phylogenia. The first analyses the process by which the human being acquires language, while the second is responsible for studying the historical evolution of a language. The anthropology of language makes language a key piece in its interpretation of the human being, although this is not extremely novel, it refers to ancient and varied cultural traditions since very distant times in the history of the West..
• La animal communication is based on the use of visual, sound and olfactory signals, as signs, to point to a reference or meaning different from such signals. Within the forms of animal communication (popularly called) animal language) are alarm screams, bees language, etc.
• Them formal languages are human artificial constructions used in mathematics and other formal disciplines, including programming languages. These buildings have internal structures that share with natural human language, so they can be partly analyzed with the same concepts as this.

Although almost until the end of the XX century an absolute difference was established between human language and animal communication, the The accumulation of a large number of studies^{[citation needed]} (especially ethological) suggests that many non-human animals, especially with developed cortical brain areas (bonobos, chimpanzees and other primates, as well as such as cetaceans -especially dolphins-, birds -especially parrots, crows, pigeons-, elephants, dogs, cats, horses, etc.) have much more complex forms of communication, and closer to human language than what was supposed by Iván Pávlov and the reflexes conditioned or the Anglo-Saxon behaviorists, who reduced psychic activities to a mere mechanistic reflex circuit of stimulus-response. Strictly speaking, Pavlov was not so mechanistic, but he assumed the language of non-human animals to correspond to a classical conditioning or first signaling system (based mainly on stimulus- response, after the reiteration of a stimulus that is associated with a «reward», which implies the reward-reward circuit, or the absence of it that generates a habit or habitus, conditioning that is also common to the vast majority of humans), while for the human being Pavlov supposes a second system of signals, which is a qualitative leap with respect to the first and which is human language, which is heuristic as it is open to the stimulus-response cycle.

The faculty of language is not the result of learning, but is congenital, that is, it is born with the human being. In addition, it is presented in the same way in all human beings, regardless of the historical moment and place geographical, that is, it is universal. Languages can be learned and forgotten, but language capacity cannot.

Language is a set of signs and symbols. A sign is a phenomenon related to another phenomenon. For example, fever is a sign of disease, falling snow is a sign of the winter season, a fire truck with its siren is a sign of fire.

A symbol is a phenomenon, something that occurs that the mind relates to another phenomenon. For example, a thumbs down symbolizes something negative, a red traffic light with a stop message. The element that distinguishes a symbol from a sign is the deliberative nature of their relationship. Signs that are set deliberately are called symbols.

Characteristics of natural languages

Several authors have drawn up lists of defining characteristics of what a natural language is, some of which are present in animal communication and formal languages. However, only natural languages have these fifteen Hockettian features, and thus this list characterizes what a natural language is.

Among the most defining features are the arbitrariness (of the relationship between the sign and the meaning), the productivity (which allows the production of new messages never made before) and the hierarchical structure (according to which, human languages have rules or syntactic and grammatical principles, so the productions are not random).

The languages that specify the human faculty of language share a series of characteristics:

• Arbitration: There is no direct relation or dependence between the elements of a language and the reality to which they refer: the link between form and meaning is arbitrary. Although there are cases of non-arbitrary connection, such as onomatopeia, they are sporadic; the vast majority of words differ between languages and even, historically, in the same language.
• Displacement: Verbal messages can refer to facts away from the time and space in which the communicative situation occurs: reference can be made to other places, the past and the future.
• Bullshit: It consists of the possibility of issuing non-true messages. A clear example can be seen in literature, characterized by the creation of fictional worlds.
• Reflectiveness: It is the ability of the system to refer to himself. Language can be used to speak of language itself.
• Variance of units: Languages use a small number of elements (sounds) that contrast clearly with each other: they are discreet units. These sounds, which do not carry in themselves meanings, are perceived by the receptors as differentiating units: salt opposes Sunbecause the elements that differentiate both terms constitute discreet units.
• Double joint: Language is a dual system, because it is organized on two levels: discrete units combine with each other to form other elements that are carriers of meaning. The first joint is composed of monemas, and the second joint is formed by fonemas.
• Productivity: Double articulation allows you to create infinite messages with a small number of elements, which makes human language privilegedly productive. In front of it, animal communication systems allow only a finite and reduced number of messages.

Linguistic behavior in humans is not instinctive, but must be acquired by contact or transmission with other human beings, especially during the first years of life, otherwise there are cases of feral children. The structure of natural languages, which are the concrete result of the human ability to develop language, allows ideas and emotions to be communicated through a system of articulated sounds, through which relationships and understanding between individuals are made possible. Human language enables the expression of thought and the externalization of desires and affectivity through initially sonorous/acoustic signs and, much later in the genesis of language, signs based on the significant/signified pair. At the beginning of the XX century, Ferdinand de Saussure considered bijectives or perfectly corresponding to the pair signifier / signified, and later Jacques Lacan considered that under the signifier "there is nothing" since the meaning of each human sign runs ("under" the censorship of the unconscious) after desire in a metonymic chain in the which signifiers constantly change meaning; Lacan has considered that the bijective or exactly corresponding relation of signifier / signified only occurs in the language of non-human animals.

The reflection that Ludwig Wittgenstein undertakes on language leads him to recognize, first, that all language entails a way of life; there is therefore a close relationship between language and the conditions of human existence. Secondly, Wittgenstein brings language closer to action by pointing out that the meaning of every word is conferred by its use, by the particular way in which it is used by those who use it. This gives an additional argument to the defense of ordinary language. But the most important thing is the third feature: Wittgenstein uses the path of language to penetrate the problems of ethics, of the meaning of life of human beings.

Human language has been described as primarily verbal as opposed to nonverbal communication. Verbal language is so named because it is made up of words (in Latin: verba), that is, formed from discrete units (for example, phonemes) ordered from the intellect as observed in a dialogue or in a conversation; According to R. Jakobson's scheme, a sender (or announcer) requires at least one message, one context, one channel or medium (air through which the voice is propagated, paper where it is written, electromagnetic waves, etc.), a code and obviously a receiver or speaker. To this Jakobson scheme, which seems to have its origins in Peirce's triangular schemes, noise is often added which can modify the scheme. Parallel to verbal language, and already existing in non-human animals, paraverbal language characterized by mimicry, gestures, grimaces and even body expressions, especially facial expressions, of instinctive origin must always be taken into account: for example, the almost vegetative and instinctive facial expression of disgust can be mimicked into an already intentional expression of disgust or anger.

The human capacity for language, as reflected in natural languages, is studied by linguistics. There is a historical progression of natural languages from speaking, then writing, and finally the understanding and explanation of grammar. From a social and historical point of view, human language has given rise to languages that live, die, move from one place to another, and change over time. Any language that stops changing or developing is categorized as a dead language. On the contrary, any language, due to the fact that it is not a dead language, and is part of the living or modern languages, is continuously undergoing readjustments that are cumulatively responsible for the so-called linguistic change. Human language is usually subdivided from F. de Saussure into speech and language, in any case in both dimensions of language synchrony must always be considered (which can be defined as the contemporary use [from speaker to speaker] of human language) and diachrony (which can be defined as the almost continuous modification of human language evolving over time).

Making a distinction in principle between one language and another is usually impossible. For example, there are some dialects of German that are similar to certain dialects of Dutch. The transition between languages within the same language family is sometimes progressive (see dialect continuum).

There are those who draw a parallel with biology, where it is not possible to make a well-defined distinction between one species and the next. In any case, the real challenge may be the result of the interaction between languages and populations (see dialect or August Schleicher). The concepts of Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache and Dachsprache are used to make finer distinctions about the degrees of difference between languages or dialects.
Apparently in human language the possibility of metaphor is fundamental (substituting an image -especially an acoustic image- by another thanks to a similarity even though there is no contiguity relationship) as Roman Jakobson demonstrates when studying aphasias using the criteria of phrase and metonymy established by Ferdinand de Saussure: some aphasias would be metonymic or syntagmatic and others would be metaphorical or paradigmatic; Jakobson observes the coalescence between this and the thesis proposed by Sigmund Freud of sliding and condensation in dream activity, respectively, and Lacan in his studies seems to verify this by considering that the unconscious is structured as a language, where a paternal metaphor is essential to establish the alienated subject of the mask or person that is the imaginary ego, from this, according to these opinions, Homo sapiens is capable of having a reality principle and a language coherently and highly heuristically articulated in a 'metonymic chain'. Instead, according to Lacan, existing non-human animals are restricted to the imaginary although the imaginary -and therefore the language- of non-human animals, according to Lacan, corresponds to the real instead of the attachment to the partly fictional or eidetic reality in which the human animal performs; that is: non-human intelligent animals seem to have apparently inarticulate languages that correspond to the factual of the environment in which they live, while humans oscillate between the registers of the Imaginary and the Real through the register of the Symbolic (or human symbolic language) can fall into fantasies, however fantasies allow ingenuity and a high capacity for evolutionary adaptation through inventiveness that has symbolic language as its main means.

On the other hand, Chomsky has theorized that the structure of human language is based on verb phrases and nominal phrases; then according to Noam Chomsky himself (2015) human language is mainly genetic; Children (regardless of their sex) have the innate capacity for verbal language without prior external information (that is not) already in the human genome, for example at 2 years of age, an infant can learn a new word during each hour of wakefulness, such a capacity would have emerged 70,000 years ago; in any case, to achieve full linguistic competence (beyond Chomsky's views) the human being must be well nourished for at least the first year of his life (fed mainly with proteins) and stimulated in a dialogical way by other humans in their first 4 years of life. Keep in mind that human conscious thinking is mainly made up of concepts and that concepts are part of language.

Various definitions

There is an immensity of definitions about what human language is, depending on each author in each era and in each circumstance. The following is a selection of several of the definitions that have been given to the language:

1. By language we understand a system of codes with whose help the objects of the outside world are designated, their actions, qualities and relationships between them. (A. R. Luria, 1977).
2. Language is a manipulative habit (J.B. Watson, 1924).
3. Language is a finite or infinite set of prayers, each of which has a finite extension and built from a finite set of elements (Noam Chomsky, 1957).
4. Language is an instance or faculty that is invoked to explain that all men speak with each other (J. P. Bornchart, 1957).
5. The language is words, elemental phrases, then substantives and differentiated verbs, and finally full sentences.(Piaget, 1983).
6. By language types:
   1. Oral language: Pronunciation of articulated vocal sounds that form words to express one's own ideas or thoughts.
   2. Body language: Set of non-verbal signals, such as body movements, postures, gestures, spatial positions that serve to express different physical, mental and emotional states.
   3. Disordered language: Defect of speech characterized by fast, disordered, nervous and arrythmic language, with omission or transposition of several letters or syllables.
   4. Explosive language: Anomalous language that is characterized because the person pauses between words breaking the rhythm of the phrase. It is sometimes observed in sclerosis in plaques.

Human language

Evolutionary origin

Human language is due to evolutionary adaptations that occur exclusively in humans of the species Homo sapiens.

In recent years, various investigations have pointed out that human language, regarding its melodic part and the structuring of phonemes, has a common evolutionary origin with the language of birds; It has even been found that the same genes that make human speech possible also make bird singing possible. A total of 55 genes show a similar pattern in the brain activity of humans and those birds capable of learning new vocalizations and rearranging the most basic sounds of their song to convey different meanings. However, the pragmatic part (which is the carrier of the content of the discourse) of our language would have derived from our non-human primate ancestors; and both capacities (melodic and pragmatic) would have merged at some point in the last 100,000 years of evolution, or, according to some recent experiments, since at least the common ancestors between modern baboons and humans. This is perhaps up to 7 or 8 million years before the present. The big difference is that the branch that gave rise to the current Homo sapiens would have —by natural selection— the brain areas (located mainly in the left hemisphere) even more developed than the current baboons, that is say: a finding suggests that the last common ancestor of humans and baboons may have possessed the vocal machinery for speech to give rise to the form of human language, and with it the origin of the different languages (languages) that they have been created by human beings. The course of language development has at least two definite consequences:

1. Development of physical abilities: Being able to produce linguistic sounds and sequences of sounds.
2. Cognitive development: It is the sufficient mental capacity to recognize, identify, differentiate and manipulate the processes of the environment (Santiuste, 1990).

Human language is amazingly flexible. We can combine a limited number of sounds and signals to produce an infinite number of sentences, each with a different meaning. Thus we can absorb, store and communicate a prodigious amount of information about the world around us. However, the really unique feature of our language is the ability to convey information about things that do not exist. Only sapiens can talk about entire types of entities that they have never seen, touched, or smelled. Legends, myths, gods and religions are products of "the cognitive revolution" and human language.

Neurolinguistics

Some of the brain areas associated with language processing (usually located in the cortex and neocortex or cerebral cortex of the left hemisphere of the brain of the brain Homo sapiens(Broca area (blue), Wernicke area (green), supramarginal circumvolution (yellow), angular circumvolution (orange), primary hearing cortex (red)).

Neurolinguistics is the disciplinary area dependent on neuroanatomy that is concerned with the brain computation of human language. The main areas of the brain that are responsible for processing language are cortical areas of the left hemisphere of the brain:

• Area of spoken language: Broca area (no. 44). Dominant hemisphere (almost always the left or not the ipsilateral.).
• Area of understanding of spoken language: Wernicke Area. It corresponds to the areas of Brodmann n.os 21, 22, 39 and 42. Cortex or bark of the left temporal lobe of the human brain.

However, although language is normally processed in the Left Hemisphere, this is only due to the physical structure that makes up language, and not because "language itself" is its own. This since it has been shown that for the Turkish whistle (a type of whistled Language; based on the whistled form of the Turkish Language), it requires the use of both cerebral hemispheres equally, due to the fact that the melody, the frequency and the tone, the whistle features, are processed in the right hemisphere.

Pathologies

Language alterations:

• Oral language disorders: due to organic or psychological causes.
  • Aphasia: Impossibility to communicate by spoken language, read or written as a result of a brain injury, once the subject has acquired even elementary language. There are three types:
    • Motive or Brochure Aphasia (expression aphasia): Brodmann's 44th area of the left hemisphere. The patient understands what he is told and knows what he means, but he cannot express it, either verbally or in writing.
    • Sensory or Wernicke aphasia (aphasia of understanding): The patient speaks but does not coordinate the words or sounds, hears but does not understand the words addressed to him, sees the letters and signs written but is incapable of reading (alicxia) and writing (agrafia).
    • Sensory or global aphasia (expression - understanding): Injury of the frontal and temporal lobes of the left hemisphere. Impossibility of speaking and alterations of verbal compression, reading and writing.
  • Afonía y disfonía: Characterized by the loss of the voice, either complete (afonía) or partially (disfonía). It occurs by an injury or paralysis of the organ of the fonation.
  • Disartria: Difficulty to articulate syllables. It is observed in progressive general paralysis, injuries of some cranial nerves and intoxications for alcohol and barbiturates.
  • Disphemies: Alteration in the emission of words. The most frequent are babbling and stuttering. It tends to be a symptom in neurotics.
  • Disphonies: Tone alterations and voice bell whose cause resides in the phoning apparatus. Example: dysphony in alcoholics, voice shut down in depressed.
  • Dislalia: Replacement, alteration or omission of seals without disorders of speech organs. Example: deltacism (D), gammacism (G), lambdacism (L), lalation (R replacement for L), rotacism (R) and sigmacism (S).
• Disorders of written language
  • Agrafia y alexia: Agrafia is the impossibility of expressing thoughts through writing.
  • 

    Language areas
    Disography: Serious irregularities in writing strokes. Example: alcoholism, age, senile, progressive general paralysis.
• Psychological disorders
  • Bradilalia: It occurs when messages are issued too slowly. It happens in people who suffer from depression or mental confusion.
  • Verbal stereotyping: This is the frequent repetition of a word or phrase that has little to do with the circumstances. It usually occurs in patients with schizophrenia or, in other cases, with depression.
  • Jergaphasia: It is a form of aphasia, derived from an injury in the sensitive areas of language. This pathology is characterized by verbal fluency with paraphasis, peripherals and abundant logorrhea.
  • Mustation: Way to speak that is characterized by the movement of the lips that pretends to say words murmuring, quietly. It is observed in certain serious diseases with serious phenomena.
  • Mutism: State in which an individual refuses to articulate any word, but he has intact his centers of language and means of expression.
  • Palilalia: It consists of spontaneous and involuntary repetition, two or three times, of the same sentence or word. It is related to the weakening of intelligence.
  • Taquilalia: It arises when there is an imbalance between the nervous influx and the ability of the mouth movement. The message is transmitted so quickly, it becomes incomprehensible. It occurs in manias or due to alcoholism or other addictions to psychotropics.
  • Verbigeration: Frequent and abnormal repetition, out of all logic, of a word or short phrases, meaninglessly interspersed in the discourse. It is common in schizophrenic and mentally deficient.

Double articulation of language

Although there are other communication codes, verbal language is the only communicative system capable of properly expressing what is to be transmitted and the only one that allows the elaboration of infinite messages. This circumstance is possible due to the double articulation of language.

Communication in nature

Types of communication according to their physical structure

Chemical communication

It depends on the sense of smell and sometimes taste. These signals can travel great distances when carried by air currents, although they are only perceived downwind. Specific chemicals that produce specific effects are called pheromones. In bee colonies, for example, the queen produces a "royal" pheromone that prevents the development of worker ovaries. Pheromones are very important when it comes to sexual attraction.

Sound communication

Sound waves can vary in height and intensity rapidly. They serve to transmit a lot of information. These signals travel in all directions and are easily located by the receiver.

For example, howler monkeys and some birds, frogs, and toads have large vocal sacs that greatly increase the sounds they make. In the case of toads, they emit a sound to attract the female and another to "warn" others that he is also male. The cicadas that sing are male, and they sing to attract females. The chicks emit sounds of different intensity where they warn the hen in different situations (if they are scared or if they are hungry or cold). The crocodiles, when they are about to be born, emit sounds with which they warn the mother of her and she uncovers the underground nest so that the little ones can rise to the surface.

Visual communication

Lots of different animals use these signals, which can be turned on and off in an instant, though they are generally useful at certain times of the day. They are usually striking or consist of sudden movements. For example, one of the male fiddler crab's claws is larger than the other, brightly colored, and shakes it to attract females. The colors and patterns on the wings of butterflies and the males of many birds attract mates over short distances. When flying at night, male lampyrids flash characteristic signals, while females respond by flashing from the ground.

Tactile communication

Tactile communication refers to signals transmitted through skin contact or external parts of living things. These signals are close at hand and are of great importance among primates, as a form of friendship indication and reassurance. The fact that one individual takes care of the other, for example eliminating undesirable parasites, is their way of reinforcing family and friendship ties. The main mechanisms are:

• Vibration transmission. They act only in very short distances. To indicate their presence to the females, the males of the spiders make their membranes vibrate in a characteristic way. Crocodiles produce vibrations from within their bodies to produce vibrations that the female can perceive.
• 

  Speech process
  Electrical transmission. Some fish living in the muddy rivers of South America and Africa use these signals capable of crossing solid bodies. They are used for aggression, for courtship and for orientation.

Language types

All languages seek to transmit something from a certain symbol and deliberately starting from man; in all types of language the basic elements of communication (sender, message and receiver) are needed so that it can be carried out. out its objective and is built thanks to the signs. They are classified as:

• Oral: Oral language has the advantage of articulating sounds with intonation, suitable for poetic expression. To be carried out, the message is transmitted through speech and is perceived in a hearing. This type of language is known as a language, that is, a set of signs that has been formed by several generations and serves to communicate.
• Mimic: is the regular use of facial gestures and manuals, silencing the words but still transmitting a message. Mymic language for some authors (such as Nietzsche) is a type of art, as it requires the use of interpretation to decode the signs used. On the other hand, behind the mimic shown, there is a thought and feeling expressed.
• Written: fulfills the important function of transmitting the knowledge of one generation to another, thanks to its permanence in time. For Vygotski written language is the passage from abstract language to language that uses the representation of words (considered as the translation or codification of oral language).

Currently there are also other types of language such as graphics that communicate the message through images (photographs, drawings and icons); the audiovisual that combines images with sounds; and the multimedia that uses all the means that it needs.

Language dimensions

Language can be studied according to four different dimensions or aspects that define characteristics of its nature:

• Formal or structural structure, which refers to the combination complexity of the codes used, the medium used for it and the patterns on which communication is based through that language. The structural dimension in turn can be divided into form, content and use:
  • Form: studied in its different aspects by phenology, morphology and syntax. The first includes the material form of the signals, the second the properties of formation of complex signals and the third the combined properties.
  • Contents: studied by semantics, which consists of the codification and decoding of semantic contents in linguistic structures.
  • Use: studied in pragmatic, which defines how the situation of use is important for both the forms used and the interpretation of the content.
• Functional, refers to the intentionality with which it is used, what advantages it provides and for which cases it is used, with what functions and in which contexts.
• Comportamental, refers to all the behavior displayed by the emitter and the receivers of the code, and the behaviors triggered by the use of language.
• Representation, refers to the intention of the emitter to expose an information without intention to give an assessment or provoke a reaction in the receiver.

Language functions

People communicate for different reasons: sometimes they just want to convey information objectively; in others, they express feelings or opinions, or try to influence others.

The various communicative purposes can be systematized, taking into account the elements of communication, in the functions of language. Several functions can coexist in the same statement, but there is always one that predominates. In Sit down at once!, although the appellative function prevails, the expressive function is also present, since the sender expresses his annoyance. This predominance is evidenced by the presence of certain linguistic features, such as the imperative and vocative moods.

Language is used to convey a reality, be it affirmative, negative, or possibility, a wish, a question, an order, and more. Depending on how we use sentences, we can distinguish different functions in language:

Basic functions

• Reference function: The language intends to be able to objectively transmit the information, that is, that the transmitter transmits the message without his personal opinion. The communication is focused on the subject or subject on which reference is made. Declarative or enunciative sentences are used. This function can be found in the newspapers.
• Emotive or expressive function: The message transmitted by the transmitter refers to his own feelings. It expresses them subjectively, showing their opinion and moods. The linguistic forms of this function correspond to the use of exclusive prayers and intersections. They are also used to increase and decrease, as well as first-person pronouns.
• Conativa or apelative function: Predominate the listener about the other communication factors. He intends to catch the receiver's attention and receive a response or reaction. Here the communication is centered on the person of you. The linguistic traits that characterize it are the use of the vocation, the imperative mode and the use of interrogatives and also the emotive function: exclamative.

Complementary functions

• Feature or contact function: The message relates to the contact between the transmitter and the receiver, through the channel. The transmitter's mission is to check that the message is transmitted correctly and reaches your receiver. It consists of starting, continuing, interrupting or ending a conversation. It is characteristic of this function to use batons or latiguillos as "Do you know?" "Do you understand?"
• Metalinguistic functions: This function can be seen when it is reported on the language or linguistic system. In this function the use of quotation marks is characteristic.
• Poetic or aesthetic function: Suele (from the Greek poiesis=creation, poietikos=creative) use in poetic language and advertising and even in the joke. Highlights the form of the message. The act of communication is focused on the message and how to transmit it. Basically, rhymes and literary figures or rhetorical tropos are used, although poetic language can be "free" and based (after specific stimuli or memories) on fantasy and imagination; this type of (creative) language on planet Earth is supposed to be unique to some human beings.
• 

  Oral language

Language as part of the information as a possible negentropic factor

Language should always be considered as a subset of information, for example in such a case Léon Brillouin published in 1959 Science et théorie de l'information (English version edited for the first time in 1962) where the relations between these two disciplines are examined. He particularly adopts a physical point of view and makes the link between Shannon's informational entropy and Boltzmann's statistical entropy where it is risked that information (and with it language) is a negentropic factor, that is, by which one can cancel entropy.