Section Contents:- Rules of grammar are what distinguish language from other forms of communication.(More...)
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- Auer, J. C. P. Language in time: the rhythm and tempo of spoken interaction.(More...)
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Rules of grammar are what distinguish language from other forms of communication. They allow a finite set of symbols to be manipulated to create a potentially infinite number of grammatical utterances. Another property of language is that the symbols used are arbitrary.
[2] Some researchers argue that a continuum exists among the communication methods of all social animals, pointing to the fundamental requirements of group behavior and the existence of mirror neurons in primates. This, however, is still a scientific question. Most researchers agree that, although human and more primitive languages have analogous features, they are not homologous.
[2] Most species of parrot, despite expert mimicry, are believed to have no linguistic comprehension at all. While proponents of animal communication systems have debated levels of semantics, these systems have not been found to have anything approaching human language syntax.
[2] The term " animal languages " is often used for nonhuman languages. 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 true language, which has been found in humans only. Karl von Frisch received the Nobelprice in 1973 for his proof of the language and dialects of the bees.
[2] In several publicized instances, nonhuman 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 ; however, they have never been successfully taught grammar.
[2] A set of agreed-upon symbols is only one feature of written language; all languages must define the structural relationships between these symbols in a system of grammar.
[2] Any concept or grammatical rule can be mapped onto a symbol. Most languages make use of sound, but the combinations of sounds used do not have any inherent meaning - they are merely an agreed-upon convention to represent a certain thing by users of that language.
[2] For Croatian, Serbian/Kosovan or Bosnian speakers, nada means "hope". Even though in principle the symbols are arbitrary, this does not mean that a language cannot have symbols that are iconic of what they stand for. Words such as "meow" sound similar to what they represent (see Onomatopoeia ), but they do not necessarily have to do so in order to be understood.
[2] Many languages use different onomatopoeias as the agreed convention to represent the sounds a cat makes.
[2] In order to qualify for inclusion the language must have a literature and it must be designed for the purpose of human communication.
[2] Later in the West, the success of science, mathematics, and other formal systems in the 20th century led many to attempt a formalization of the study of language as a "semantic code". This resulted in the academic discipline of linguistics, the founding of which is attributed to Ferdinand de Saussure.
[2] Mathematics and computer science use artificial entities called formal languages (including programming languages and markup languages, and some that are more theoretical in nature). These often take the form of character strings, produced by a combination of formal grammar and semantics of arbitrary complexity.
[2] Programming languages are used 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 used for artificial languages that are more limited.
[2] A programming language is an extreme case of a formal language that can be used to control the behavior of a machine, particularly a computer, to perform specific tasks.
[2] Specifically excluded are reconstructed languages and computer programming languages.
[2] 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.
[2] Human languages are usually referred to as natural languages, and the science of studying them is linguistics. A common progression for natural languages is that they are first spoken, then written, and then an understanding and explanation of their grammar (according to speech) is attempted.
[2] 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.
[2] 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.
[2] Some like to make parallels with biology, where it is not possible to make a well-defined distinction between one species and the next. The concepts of Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache and Dachsprache are used to make finer distinctions about the degrees of difference between languages or dialects.
[2] An example of a widely used controlled natural language is Simplified English, which was originally developed for aerospace industry maintenance manuals.
[2] 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.
[2] To date, the most successful auxiliary language is Esperanto, invented by Polish ophthalmologist Zamenhof. It has a relatively large community roughly estimated at about 2 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. Other auxiliary languages with a relatively large number of speakers and literature are Interlingua and Ido.
[2] Programming languages are defined using syntactic and semantic rules, to determine structure and meaning respectively.
[2] The situation with dolphins and whales presents a special case in that there is some evidence that spontaneous development of complex vocal language is occurring, but it certainly has not been proven.
[2] Any language that stops changing begins to die ; any language that is a living language is in a state of continuous change.
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[3] New languages and dictionaries are constantly being added to YourDictionary.com; as a result, we have the widest and deepest set of dictionaries, grammars, and other language resources on the web.
[4] There are 6,800 known languages
6,800 known languages spoken in the 200 countries of the world. 2,261 have writing systems (the others are only spoken) and about 300 are represented by on-line dictionaries as of May 11, 2004.
[4] Auer, J. C. P. Language in time: the rhythm and tempo of spoken interaction. [5] Brendemoen, Bernt, 1949-, ed. Language encounters across time and space: studies in language contact.
[5] Senft, Gunter, 1952-, ed. Referring to space: studies in Austronesian and Papuan languages.
[5] Whether you're looking for online language lessons, translating dictionaries, native literature, translation services, software, language schools, or just a little information on a language you've heard about, iLoveLanguages probably has something to suit your needs. [6] The more than 2400 links at iLoveLanguages have been hand-reviewed to bring you the best language links the Web has to offer.
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