Back to: Language Competence and Communication Skills
What is Language
Language is the method of communication that humans use to express their thoughts, ideas, emotions, and so on to one another. It is a semiotic or symbolic system that employs a set of signals with two sides, a signifier and a signified, according to Ferdinand de Saussure. To put it simply, language is made up of words (the form of the language) and their meanings, both of which are in an arbitrary connection with each other.
For instance, the doghood is the signified of the term “dog,” which is the signifier. Dog is a group of letters when written down, and when said, it is a group of the three sounds d, o, and g. It’s vital to remember that the sounds have no meaning on their own; instead, they only have significance when they are written in English from left to right. As we leave a gap between each symbol in writing, we can clearly identify them.
However, when spoken, the term can be a little problematic. Every sign is in opposition to every other sign that comprises the language. We can practically construct an infinite number of thoughts and ideas with the use of these signals since languages have an infinite number of signs.
“Every year, hundreds of thousands of books appear, and clearly each of them is new. If it were the same as a previously published book this would be considered a breach of copyright! However, no native speaker of the. language experiences trouble understanding them (apart from technical books). .. Linguists mostly study only signs that consist of just one sentence.”
According to Saussure, signs are placed or constructed linearly to form sentences; each sign adds something to the signs to its left and right, and all the signs taken together give the sentences their meaning.
For instance, the four words in He is coming tomorrow are ordered from left to right. Each sign has a connection to other signs in its class; for example, he is connected to her and every other pronoun. Additionally, adverbs connect tomorrow to today, yesterday, and all other temporal terms.
Language signals in linguistics are divided into four levels:
- Phonology (sound patterns, called phonemes),
- Morphology (minimal meaningful word, or the grammatical part of a word- -prefixes and suffixes),
- Syntax (the way morphemes are arranged into sentences -grammar) and
- Semantics (the meanings–what is signified).
