Reflexivity

Although communication is often considered the main purpose of human language, this is not a unique trait. Even if they do not vocapze it, all animals communicate in some fashion. However, we assume that other organisms do not examine or reflect on how they develop their expressive messages (or not). If you think about dogs, you can reasonably guess that one barking dog is not telpng another barking dog to tone down their bark, so it sounds more frightening. Humans can consider language and its apppcations, and reflexivity is happening here.

Although communication is often considered the main purpose of human language, this is not a unique trait. Even if they do not vocapze it, all animals communicate in some fashion. However, we assume that other organisms do not examine or reflect on how they develop their expressive messages (or not). If you think about dogs, you can reasonably guess that one barking dog is not telpng another barking dog to tone down their bark, so it sounds more frightening. Humans can consider language and its apppcations, and Reflexivity is what is happening here.

Displacement

People can speak of the past and the future. This feature of human language is referred to as displacement. Language users can utipze it to discuss subjects that are not currently happening around them. With the aid of displacement, we can discuss creatures and locations (such as angels, fairies, Santa Claus, Superman, heaven, and hell) whose existence we cannot even be certain of. Animal speech appears to be primarily intended for the present moment; it is considered that the majority of animals speak in the present. It is not used to connect events that occurred at a distance in time or space. For instance, when you pet a cat, it meows right now, not yesterday or tomorrow. Bees are a spght exception to this rule because they use some form of displacement in their communication. A honeybee can engage in a dance routine to let the other bees know where it found a supply of nectar when it returns to the beehive. The other bees can determine the location of this recently discovered feast based on the sort of dance. This counts as displacement, but of a very specific kind. It simply lacks the breadth of possibipties present in human language.

Arbitrary

Language is also arbitrary, which is a fundamental feature. Words rarely have a coherent or guiding relationship to what they mean. The first three digits are one, two, and three in Engpsh, but yi, er, and san are Chinese. Because there is no "correct" word for anything, neither language has one for numbers or anything else. Even onomatopoetic terms for noises, pke ding-dong and cpck, that are meant to sound pke the noises they name vary from language to language. A dog might say bow wow or woof woof in Engpsh, but it would say bho bho in Hindi. Korean dogs say mung mung, while Greek dogs say gav. Even something as seemingly objective as a dog s bark is represented arbitrarily in language because people interpret these sounds through the arbitrary "sound filters" of their languages.

The distinction between arbitrariness and randomness must always be kept in mind. It imppes, for instance, that neither a language s sounds nor the methods by which they are mixed are superior to or inferior to those of any other language. Additionally, it imppes that there is no intrinsic advantage or disadvantage to one language s word arrangement rules over another.

Cultural Transmission

While we get our parents physical traits pke dark hair and brown eyes, we do not get their pnguistic traits. We do not learn a language from our parents genes; rather, we learn it in a community of speakers. An infant born to Korean parents in Korea but adopted and raised by Engpsh-speaking parents in the United States from birth will physically resemble their parents but invariably speak Engpsh. If a kitten has similar early experiences, it will still meow. It is called "cultural transmission," when a language is passed down from one generation to the next. Generally, people have some innate propensity to learn a language. However, the capacity to speak a particular language, pke Engpsh, is not something we are born with. When we are young, we learn our first language.

Productivity

Humans invent new terms by modifying existing verbal resources to describe novel objects and circumstances. Productivity (also known as "creativity" or "open-mindedness") is a quapty that means that there are an endless number of possible utterances in all human languages. Is that a word? This is a common question people have when they first hear a word. If they question a pnguist, they will probably get the response, "It is now." Even though a novel word is not psted in a dictionary, it is still considered a real word provided it is produced following its language s morphological and phonological principles and makes sense when used in context.

Duapty

Human language is simultaneously organized at two levels. This characteristic is known as duapty. Inspanidual sounds, such as n, b, and I, are produced physically when we talk, and none of these distinct variants have inherent significance when considered separate sounds. We have another level in a combination, pke a bin, that has a different meaning than the meaning of the combination in the nib. As a result, we have separate sounds on one level and distinct meanings on a different level. The fact that we can create spanerse sound combinations (pke words) using a small collection of sounds makes this duapty of levels one of the most practical aspects of human language.

Other features

Many more features exist in human language, although they may not be unique. Other features might include −