What are the six properties of human language?

Answer 1

Here the 6 properties of language.

Arbitrariness. There is no inherent connection between a symbol and the concept or object to which it refers; there is only an arbitrary connection between sound and meaning. Contrast this with iconic communication systems, such as the bee's waggle dance.

•Discreteness. Although sound patterns can vary continuously across several dimensions (e.g., duration of sound, loudness of sound), language uses only a small number of discrete ranges on those dimensions to convey meaning. Thus languages do not rely on continuous variation of vowel duration, for instance, to signal changes in meaning.

•Displacement. Linguistic messages are not tied in time or space to the topic of the communication; this implicates an elaborate memory system within the speaker or hearer to recall the past and anticipate the future.

•Productivity. Language is novel, consisting of utterances that have never been uttered or comprehended before; new messages, including words, can be coined freely by means of rules and agreement among the members of the language culture.

•Duality of patterning (duality of structure). A small set of sounds, or phonemes, can be combined and recombined into an infinitely large set of sentences, or meanings. The sounds have no inherent meaning; the combinations do have meaning.

•Cultural or traditional transmission. Language is acquired by exposure to the culture, to the language of the surrounding people. Contrast this with various courtship and mating communications of animals, in which the specific messages are genetically governed.

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