ULOG: Nature of Language

Human language can be seen as purely the human composition of organized noise: ”organized” because it is understood when used by group of people, “noise” because to those who do not understand a particular language or sound, it becomes a noise or meaningless to them. Language is purely human sounds, only humans have language, animals only communicate using signs with their body gestures.

There is no connection of a word with what it is signified or representing, a book is called a book in English but can be call with a different name from a different language. There is no actual relationship between words of a language and the meaning or the ideas they conveyed by them. For example there is no iconic relationship between the word “key” in English and “kokoro” in Yoruba yet they all refer to the same thing.

Moreover, Language is sound productive as there is a high capacity to say things that have never been said or heard before and yet to be heard and understood by other users of the same language. Only human beings have the ability to developed new utterances by selecting words, phrases and arranging them in a new way according to the set rules of a particular language.

More so, Language is culturally transmitted; language is a medium of culture transmission, when learning a language, the culture of that particular language is also learnt by the learner, it is difficult to learn Kagoro language without learning some of the culture of the Kagoro people, the learner may not only learn the language but may also learn how Kagoro people dress and practice their tradition.

Furthermore, Language is subject to change as it is dynamic; our speech varies from generation to generation. These changes are sometimes fast and sometimes slow and as such may be hard to be noticed, the accumulation of such changes going on in different ways in different places may eventually cause a local version of the same language, to become distinct, mutually unintelligible languages like French and Spanish, English and German.