What is Language?

Many people believe language is what differentiates humans from all other hominids

Difference between language and other communicative behavior?

Scholarly Debate

• Language as symbolic behavior
• The essence of language is the "duality of patterning"
• Language lies on a continuum with other types of communicative behavior
• Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker emphasize the universal rule-governed nature of language
• Varied purposes of language

Language: a range of communicative behaviors which have the sign as a principle element

What did Burling and Saussure say?

Burling's Elements of Language

• Massive vocabulary and duality of patterning (i.e. phonemes and morphemes)
• Arbitrariness
• Syntax and recursive rules
• Voluntary control
• Must allow displacement
• Includes audible and visual mediums

Saussure's Linguistic Sign

• Principle 1: the arbitrary nature of the sign
• Principle 2:the linear nature of the signifier