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96-784: General Intelligence Directorate may refer to: Dirección General de Inteligencia (General Directorate of Intelligence, Cuba) General Intelligence Directorate (Egypt) General Intelligence Directorate (Jordan) General Intelligence Directorate (Saudi Arabia) General Intelligence Directorate (Syria) General Directorate of Intelligence (Afghanistan) See also [ edit ] National Intelligence Service (disambiguation) Foreign Intelligence service (disambiguation) State Intelligence Service (disambiguation) Federal Intelligence Service (disambiguation) Directorate of Military Intelligence (disambiguation) Intelligence Bureau (disambiguation) Topics referred to by

192-421: A bonobo named Kanzi learned to express itself using a set of symbolic lexigrams . Similarly, many species of birds and whales learn their songs by imitating other members of their species. However, while some animals may acquire large numbers of words and symbols, none have been able to learn as many different signs as are generally known by an average 4 year old human, nor have any acquired anything resembling

288-504: A 2017 study on Ardipithecus ramidus challenges this belief. Scholarly opinions vary as to the developments since the appearance of the genus Homo some 2.5 million years ago. Some scholars assume the development of primitive language-like systems (proto-language) as early as Homo habilis (2.3 million years ago) while others place the development of primitive symbolic communication only with Homo erectus (1.8 million years ago) or Homo heidelbergensis (0.6 million years ago), and

384-411: A clause can contain another clause (as in "[I see [the dog is running]]"). Human language is the only known natural communication system whose adaptability may be referred to as modality independent . This means that it can be used not only for communication through one channel or medium, but through several. For example, spoken language uses the auditive modality, whereas sign languages and writing use

480-493: A combination of segmental and suprasegmental elements. The segmental elements are those that follow each other in sequences, which are usually represented by distinct letters in alphabetic scripts, such as the Roman script. In free flowing speech, there are no clear boundaries between one segment and the next, nor usually are there any audible pauses between them. Segments therefore are distinguished by their distinct sounds which are

576-421: A different medium, include writing (including braille ), sign (in manually coded language ), whistling and drumming . Tertiary modes – such as semaphore , Morse code and spelling alphabets – convey the secondary mode of writing in a different medium. For some extinct languages that are maintained for ritual or liturgical purposes, writing may be the primary mode, with speech secondary. When described as

672-606: A finite, usually very limited, number of possible ideas that can be expressed. In contrast, human language is open-ended and productive , meaning that it allows humans to produce a vast range of utterances from a finite set of elements, and to create new words and sentences. This is possible because human language is based on a dual code, in which a finite number of elements which are meaningless in themselves (e.g. sounds, letters or gestures) can be combined to form an infinite number of larger units of meaning (words and sentences). However, one study has demonstrated that an Australian bird,

768-685: A natural-sounding rhythm and a relatively normal sentence structure . The second area is Broca's area , in the posterior inferior frontal gyrus of the dominant hemisphere. People with a lesion to this area develop expressive aphasia , meaning that they know what they want to say, they just cannot get it out. They are typically able to understand what is being said to them, but unable to speak fluently. Other symptoms that may be present in expressive aphasia include problems with word repetition . The condition affects both spoken and written language. Those with this aphasia also exhibit ungrammatical speech and show inability to use syntactic information to determine

864-658: A popular bloodless coup in Grenada , led by Maurice Bishop , the Cuban DI sent advisers to the island nation to assist the new government. The DI was also instrumental in persuading the Soviet Union to aid Grenada, aid that Grenadian general Hudson Austin called essential to the success of the Caribbean anti-imperialist movement. The DI coordinated 780 Cuban engineers and intelligence operatives. Beginning in 1967

960-687: A rapid expansion of the DI's "western" operations. By 1971, 70 percent of the Cuban diplomats in London were actually DI agents and proved invaluable to Moscow after the British government 's mass expulsion of Soviet intelligence officers. In 1962 the Soviet Union opened its largest foreign SIGINT site in Lourdes , Cuba, approximately 25 kilometres (16 mi) from Havana . The Intelligence Resource Program of

1056-416: A result of their different articulations, and can be either vowels or consonants. Suprasegmental phenomena encompass such elements as stress , phonation type, voice timbre , and prosody or intonation , all of which may have effects across multiple segments. Consonants and vowel segments combine to form syllables , which in turn combine to form utterances; these can be distinguished phonetically as

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1152-411: A rich set of case suffixes that provide details about the instrument used to perform an action. Others lack such grammatical precision in the oral mode, but supplement it with gesture to convey that information in the sign mode. In Iwaidja , for example, 'he went out for fish using a torch' is spoken as simply "he-hunted fish torch", but the word for 'torch' is accompanied by a gesture indicating that it

1248-641: A science since the first grammatical descriptions of particular languages in India more than 2000 years ago, after the development of the Brahmi script . Modern linguistics is a science that concerns itself with all aspects of language, examining it from all of the theoretical viewpoints described above. The academic study of language is conducted within many different disciplinary areas and from different theoretical angles, all of which inform modern approaches to linguistics. For example, descriptive linguistics examines

1344-536: A sign is encoded and transmitted by a sender through a channel to a receiver who decodes it. Some of the properties that define human language as opposed to other communication systems are: the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, meaning that there is no predictable connection between a linguistic sign and its meaning; the duality of the linguistic system, meaning that linguistic structures are built by combining elements into larger structures that can be seen as layered, e.g. how sounds build words and words build phrases;

1440-426: A specific instance of a language system, and parole for the concrete use of speech in a particular language. When speaking of language as a general concept, definitions can be used which stress different aspects of the phenomenon. These definitions also entail different approaches and understandings of language, and they also inform different and often incompatible schools of linguistic theory . Debates about

1536-456: A structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary . It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing . Human language is characterized by its cultural and historical diversity, with significant variations observed between cultures and across time. Human languages possess the properties of productivity and displacement , which enable

1632-521: A system of symbolic communication , language is traditionally seen as consisting of three parts: signs , meanings , and a code connecting signs with their meanings. The study of the process of semiosis , how signs and meanings are combined, used, and interpreted is called semiotics . Signs can be composed of sounds, gestures, letters, or symbols, depending on whether the language is spoken, signed, or written, and they can be combined into complex signs, such as words and phrases. When used in communication,

1728-650: A system that is largely cultural, learned through social interaction. Continuity-based theories are held by a majority of scholars, but they vary in how they envision this development. Those who see language as being mostly innate, such as psychologist Steven Pinker , hold the precedents to be animal cognition , whereas those who see language as a socially learned tool of communication, such as psychologist Michael Tomasello , see it as having developed from animal communication in primates: either gestural or vocal communication to assist in cooperation. Other continuity-based models see language as having developed from music ,

1824-488: A theory is Noam Chomsky , the originator of the generative theory of grammar , who has defined language as the construction of sentences that can be generated using transformational grammars. Chomsky considers these rules to be an innate feature of the human mind and to constitute the rudiments of what language is. By way of contrast, such transformational grammars are also commonly used in formal logic , in formal linguistics , and in applied computational linguistics . In

1920-543: A view already espoused by Rousseau , Herder , Humboldt , and Charles Darwin . A prominent proponent of this view is archaeologist Steven Mithen . Stephen Anderson states that the age of spoken languages is estimated at 60,000 to 100,000 years and that: Researchers on the evolutionary origin of language generally find it plausible to suggest that language was invented only once, and that all modern spoken languages are thus in some way related, even if that relation can no longer be recovered ... because of limitations on

2016-415: Is modality -independent, but written or signed language is the way to inscribe or encode the natural human speech or gestures. Depending on philosophical perspectives regarding the definition of language and meaning, when used as a general concept, "language" may refer to the cognitive ability to learn and use systems of complex communication, or to describe the set of rules that makes up these systems, or

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2112-472: Is a longitudinal wave propagated through the air at a frequency capable of vibrating the ear drum . This ability depends on the physiology of the human speech organs. These organs consist of the lungs, the voice box ( larynx ), and the upper vocal tract – the throat, the mouth, and the nose. By controlling the different parts of the speech apparatus, the airstream can be manipulated to produce different speech sounds. The sound of speech can be analyzed into

2208-588: Is called linguistics . Critical examinations of languages, such as philosophy of language, the relationships between language and thought , how words represent experience, etc., have been debated at least since Gorgias and Plato in ancient Greek civilization . Thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) have argued that language originated from emotions, while others like Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) have argued that languages originated from rational and logical thought. Twentieth century philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) argued that philosophy

2304-563: Is called a language isolate . There are also many unclassified languages whose relationships have not been established, and spurious languages may have not existed at all. Academic consensus holds that between 50% and 90% of languages spoken at the beginning of the 21st century will probably have become extinct by the year 2100. The English word language derives ultimately from Proto-Indo-European * dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s "tongue, speech, language" through Latin lingua , "language; tongue", and Old French language . The word

2400-534: Is common for oral language to be accompanied by gesture, and for sign language to be accompanied by mouthing . In addition, some language communities use both modes to convey lexical or grammatical meaning, each mode complementing the other. Such bimodal use of language is especially common in genres such as story-telling (with Plains Indian Sign Language and Australian Aboriginal sign languages used alongside oral language, for example), but also occurs in mundane conversation. For instance, many Australian languages have

2496-425: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Direcci%C3%B3n General de Inteligencia Manuel "Redbeard" Piñeiro was the first director of the DI in 1961, and his term lasted until 1964. Another top leader who directed the famous office, located on Linea and A, Vedado, was the now retired Div. General , Jesús Bermúdez Cutiño . He was transferred from being

2592-503: Is obstructed, commonly at the lips, teeth, alveolar ridge , palate , velum , uvula , or glottis . Each place of articulation produces a different set of consonant sounds, which are further distinguished by manner of articulation , or the kind of friction, whether full closure, in which case the consonant is called occlusive or stop , or different degrees of aperture creating fricatives and approximants . Consonants can also be either voiced or unvoiced , depending on whether

2688-407: Is quite limited, though it has advanced considerably with the use of modern imaging techniques. The discipline of linguistics dedicated to studying the neurological aspects of language is called neurolinguistics . Early work in neurolinguistics involved the study of language in people with brain lesions, to see how lesions in specific areas affect language and speech. In this way, neuroscientists in

2784-454: Is really the study of language itself. Major figures in contemporary linguistics of these times include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky . Language is thought to have gradually diverged from earlier primate communication systems when early hominins acquired the ability to form a theory of mind and shared intentionality . This development is sometimes thought to have coincided with an increase in brain volume, and many linguists see

2880-415: Is sometimes used to refer to codes , ciphers , and other kinds of artificially constructed communication systems such as formally defined computer languages used for computer programming . Unlike conventional human languages, a formal language in this sense is a system of signs for encoding and decoding information . This article specifically concerns the properties of natural human language as it

2976-435: Is specific to the ability to use language, not to the physiology used for speech production. With technological advances in the late 20th century, neurolinguists have also incorporated non-invasive techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electrophysiology to study language processing in individuals without impairments. Spoken language relies on human physical ability to produce sound , which

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3072-465: Is studied in the discipline of linguistics . As an object of linguistic study, "language" has two primary meanings: an abstract concept, and a specific linguistic system, e.g. " French ". The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure , who defined the modern discipline of linguistics, first explicitly formulated the distinction using the French word langage for language as a concept, langue as

3168-437: Is supported by the fact that all cognitively normal children raised in an environment where language is accessible will acquire language without formal instruction. Languages may even develop spontaneously in environments where people live or grow up together without a common language; for example, creole languages and spontaneously developed sign languages such as Nicaraguan Sign Language . This view, which can be traced back to

3264-469: Is that language is such a unique human trait that it cannot be compared to anything found among non-humans and that it must therefore have appeared suddenly in the transition from pre-hominids to early man. These theories can be defined as discontinuity-based. Similarly, theories based on the generative view of language pioneered by Noam Chomsky see language mostly as an innate faculty that is largely genetically encoded, whereas functionalist theories see it as

3360-404: Is the default modality for language in all cultures. The production of spoken language depends on sophisticated capacities for controlling the lips, tongue and other components of the vocal apparatus, the ability to acoustically decode speech sounds, and the neurological apparatus required for acquiring and producing language. The study of the genetic bases for human language is at an early stage:

3456-488: The Enlightenment and its debates about human origins, it became fashionable to speculate about the origin of language. Thinkers such as Rousseau and Johann Gottfried Herder argued that language had originated in the instinctive expression of emotions, and that it was originally closer to music and poetry than to the logical expression of rational thought. Rationalist philosophers such as Kant and René Descartes held

3552-683: The Federation of American Scientists stated in 2001 that the Lourdes facility was reported to cover a 28 square-mile (73 km ) area, with 1,000 to 1,500 Soviet and later solely Russian engineers, technicians, and military personnel working at the base. Those familiar with the Lourdes facility confirmed that the base has multiple groups of tracking dishes and its own satellite system, with some groups used to intercept telephone calls, faxes, and computer communications in general, and with other groups used to cover targeted telephones and devices. In 2001,

3648-761: The Middle East . There have also been allegations that Cuban DI agents interrogated U.S. POWs held at the Cu Loc POW camp in North Vietnam . Shortly after the election of Salvador Allende as president of Chile in November 1970, the DI worked extremely closely to strengthen Allende's increasingly precarious position. The Cuban DI station chief Luis Fernández Oña married Allende's daughter Beatriz , who later committed suicide in Cuba. Shortly after

3744-494: The chestnut-crowned babbler , is capable of using the same acoustic elements in different arrangements to create two functionally distinct vocalizations. Additionally, pied babblers have demonstrated the ability to generate two functionally distinct vocalisations composed of the same sound type, which can only be distinguished by the number of repeated elements. Several species of animals have proved to be able to acquire forms of communication through social learning: for instance

3840-425: The comparative method . The formal study of language is often considered to have started in India with Pāṇini , the 5th century BC grammarian who formulated 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology . However, Sumerian scribes already studied the differences between Sumerian and Akkadian grammar around 1900 BC. Subsequent grammatical traditions developed in all of the ancient cultures that adopted writing. In

3936-423: The mental faculty that allows humans to undertake linguistic behaviour: to learn languages and to produce and understand utterances. This definition stresses the universality of language to all humans, and it emphasizes the biological basis for the human capacity for language as a unique development of the human brain . Proponents of the view that the drive to language acquisition is innate in humans argue that this

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4032-503: The 17th century AD, the French Port-Royal Grammarians developed the idea that the grammars of all languages were a reflection of the universal basics of thought, and therefore that grammar was universal. In the 18th century, the first use of the comparative method by British philologist and expert on ancient India William Jones sparked the rise of comparative linguistics . The scientific study of language

4128-418: The 19th century discovered that two areas in the brain are crucially implicated in language processing. The first area is Wernicke's area , which is in the posterior section of the superior temporal gyrus in the dominant cerebral hemisphere. People with a lesion in this area of the brain develop receptive aphasia , a condition in which there is a major impairment of language comprehension, while speech retains

4224-588: The DGI, working through Filiberto Ojeda Ríos , organized and trained the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (FALN) in 1974. In October 1974, Ojeda was arrested and charged with terrorist acts against American hotels in Puerto Rico. Authorities found a substantial amount of Cuban government documents and secret codes in his possession. Shortly after his release on bail he disappeared but

4320-612: The DI had begun to establish ties with various Nicaraguan revolutionary organizations. The Soviets were upset at what they saw as Cuba upstaging the KGB in Nicaragua. By 1970 the DI had managed to train hundreds of Sandinista guerrilla leaders and had vast influence over the organization. In 1969 the DI had financed and organized an operation to free the jailed Sandinistan leader Carlos Fonseca from his prison in Costa Rica . Fonseca

4416-578: The DI would play in the Cuban–Nicaraguan relationship a meeting in Havana on 27 July 1979, at which diplomatic ties between the two countries were re-established after over 25 years. Julián López Díaz , a prominent DI agent, was named ambassador to Nicaragua. Cuban military and DI advisers initially brought in during the Sandinistan insurgency, would swell to over 2,500 and operated at all levels of

4512-577: The FSLN on the botched assassination attempt of Turner B. Shelton , the U.S. ambassador in Managua and a close friend to the Somoza family . The FSLN managed to secure several hostages, exchanging them for safe passage to Cuba and a $ 1 million ransom. After the successful ousting of Anastasio Somoza , DI involvement in the new Sandinista government expanded rapidly. An early indication of the central role that

4608-624: The Russian President, Vladimir Putin , announced that the facility would be shut down. The Soviets also collaborated with the DI to assist Central Intelligence Agency defector Philip Agee in the publication of the Covert Action Information Bulletin . Throughout its 40-year history the DI has been actively involved in aiding leftist movements, primarily in Latin America , Africa , and

4704-509: The Soviets sought a more active role in shaping the DI. In 1970 a team of KGB advisers led by Gen. Viktor Semyonov was sent to the DI to purge it of officers and agents considered anti-Soviet by the KGB. Manuel Piñeiro , becoming increasingly upset at the co-option of the DI by the Soviets, was removed during the 1970 purge and replaced with the pro-Soviet José Méndez Cominches as head of the DI. Semyonov also took this opportunity to oversee

4800-447: The brain, implanting a language organ in an otherwise primate brain." Though cautioning against taking this story literally, Chomsky insists that "it may be closer to reality than many other fairy tales that are told about evolutionary processes, including language." In March 2024, researchers reported that the beginnings of human language began about 1.6 million years ago. The study of language, linguistics , has been developing into

4896-639: The chief of the Army Intelligence (DIM) to the Ministry of Interior after the corruption trials and executions of Arnaldo Ochoa and José Abrantes Fernández in 1989. The current head of the DI is Brig. Gen. Eduardo Delgado Rodríguez . The total number of people working for the DI is about 15,000. Given Cuba's small size, the DI is considered to be an especially effective agency which "punches above its weight" in espionage operations, according to The Economist . New recruits do research within

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4992-608: The communication of bees that can communicate the location of sources of nectar that are out of sight), the degree to which it is used in human language is also considered unique. Theories about the origin of language differ in regard to their basic assumptions about what language is. Some theories are based on the idea that language is so complex that one cannot imagine it simply appearing from nothing in its final form, but that it must have evolved from earlier pre-linguistic systems among our pre-human ancestors. These theories can be called continuity-based theories. The opposite viewpoint

5088-410: The complex grammar of human language. Human languages differ from animal communication systems in that they employ grammatical and semantic categories , such as noun and verb, present and past, which may be used to express exceedingly complex meanings. It is distinguished by the property of recursivity : for example, a noun phrase can contain another noun phrase (as in "[[the chimpanzee]'s lips]") or

5184-694: The creation of an infinite number of sentences, and the ability to refer to objects, events, and ideas that are not immediately present in the discourse. The use of human language relies on social convention and is acquired through learning. Estimates of the number of human languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. Precise estimates depend on an arbitrary distinction (dichotomy) established between languages and dialects . Natural languages are spoken , signed, or both; however, any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli  – for example, writing, whistling, signing, or braille . In other words, human language

5280-461: The degree of lip aperture and the placement of the tongue within the oral cavity. Vowels are called close when the lips are relatively closed, as in the pronunciation of the vowel [i] (English "ee"), or open when the lips are relatively open, as in the vowel [a] (English "ah"). If the tongue is located towards the back of the mouth, the quality changes, creating vowels such as [u] (English "oo"). The quality also changes depending on whether

5376-541: The development of language proper with anatomically modern Homo sapiens with the Upper Paleolithic revolution less than 100,000 years ago. Chomsky is one prominent proponent of a discontinuity-based theory of human language origins. He suggests that for scholars interested in the nature of language, "talk about the evolution of the language capacity is beside the point." Chomsky proposes that perhaps "some random mutation took place [...] and it reorganized

5472-495: The distinctions between syntagm and paradigm , and the Langue-parole distinction , distinguishing language as an abstract system ( langue ), from language as a concrete manifestation of this system ( parole ). In the 1960s, Noam Chomsky formulated the generative theory of language . According to this theory, the most basic form of language is a set of syntactic rules that is universal for all humans and which underlies

5568-413: The fact that humans use it to express themselves and to manipulate objects in their environment. Functional theories of grammar explain grammatical structures by their communicative functions, and understand the grammatical structures of language to be the result of an adaptive process by which grammar was "tailored" to serve the communicative needs of its users. This view of language is associated with

5664-709: The first Soviet officials to recognize Fidel Castro 's potential as a revolutionary, urged the Soviet administration to strengthen ties with the new Cuban leader. Moscow saw Cuba as having far more appeal with new revolutionary movements, western intellectuals, and members of the New Left with Cuba's perceived David and Goliath struggle against U.S. imperialism. However, in the early 1960s, Czechoslovak intelligence (StB) had more intensive contacts with emerging Cuban DI than KGB. Czechoslovaks provided Cubans with intelligence reports, spy equipment, and training. Manuel Piñeiro

5760-422: The formal theories of the generative school, functional theories of language propose that since language is fundamentally a tool, its structures are best analyzed and understood by reference to their functions. Formal theories of grammar seek to define the different elements of language and describe the way they relate to each other as systems of formal rules or operations, while functional theories seek to define

5856-408: The functions performed by language and then relate them to the linguistic elements that carry them out. The framework of cognitive linguistics interprets language in terms of the concepts (which are sometimes universal, and sometimes specific to a particular language) which underlie its forms. Cognitive linguistics is primarily concerned with how the mind creates meaning through language. Speaking

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5952-413: The grammar of single languages, theoretical linguistics develops theories on how best to conceptualize and define the nature of language based on data from the various extant human languages, sociolinguistics studies how languages are used for social purposes informing in turn the study of the social functions of language and grammatical description, neurolinguistics studies how language is processed in

6048-420: The grammars of all human languages. This set of rules is called Universal Grammar ; for Chomsky, describing it is the primary objective of the discipline of linguistics. Thus, he considered that the grammars of individual languages are only of importance to linguistics insofar as they allow us to deduce the universal underlying rules from which the observable linguistic variability is generated. In opposition to

6144-420: The history of their evolution can be reconstructed by comparing modern languages to determine which traits their ancestral languages must have had in order for the later developmental stages to occur. A group of languages that descend from a common ancestor is known as a language family ; in contrast, a language that has been demonstrated not to have any living or non-living relationship with another language

6240-445: The human brain and allows the experimental testing of theories, computational linguistics builds on theoretical and descriptive linguistics to construct computational models of language often aimed at processing natural language or at testing linguistic hypotheses, and historical linguistics relies on grammatical and lexical descriptions of languages to trace their individual histories and reconstruct trees of language families by using

6336-631: The incidence of bombings by Puerto Rican extremists, particularly the FALN, escalated sharply. Targets included U.S. companies and public places. The FALN was responsible for a bombing that killed four and wounded dozens at the historic Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan on January 25, 1975. Later that year, Fidel Castro sponsored the First World Solidarity Conference for the Independence of Puerto Rico in Havana. Ríos

6432-408: The lips are rounded as opposed to unrounded, creating distinctions such as that between [i] (unrounded front vowel such as English "ee") and [y] ( rounded front vowel such as German "ü"). Consonants are those sounds that have audible friction or closure at some point within the upper vocal tract. Consonant sounds vary by place of articulation, i.e. the place in the vocal tract where the airflow

6528-403: The meaning of sentences. Both expressive and receptive aphasia also affect the use of sign language, in analogous ways to how they affect speech, with expressive aphasia causing signers to sign slowly and with incorrect grammar, whereas a signer with receptive aphasia will sign fluently, but make little sense to others and have difficulties comprehending others' signs. This shows that the impairment

6624-595: The methods available for reconstruction. Because language emerged in the early prehistory of man, before the existence of any written records, its early development has left no historical traces, and it is believed that no comparable processes can be observed today. Theories that stress continuity often look at animals to see if, for example, primates display any traits that can be seen as analogous to what pre-human language must have been like. Early human fossils can be inspected for traces of physical adaptation to language use or pre-linguistic forms of symbolic behaviour. Among

6720-415: The ministry, mostly on counterintelligence fields (which has its own five-year career academy) and also, over regular college students, who are recruited around the second year on their programs. Those students mostly study languages , history , communications , and sociology . Once they get their diplomas, they undergo several months of official intelligence training, and a year or so after, they receive

6816-572: The mouth such as the l-sounds (called laterals , because the air flows along both sides of the tongue), and the r-sounds (called rhotics ). By using these speech organs, humans can produce hundreds of distinct sounds: some appear very often in the world's languages, whereas others are much more common in certain language families, language areas, or even specific to a single language. Human languages display considerable plasticity in their deployment of two fundamental modes: oral (speech and mouthing ) and manual (sign and gesture). For example, it

6912-488: The nature and origin of language go back to the ancient world. Greek philosophers such as Gorgias and Plato debated the relation between words, concepts and reality. Gorgias argued that language could represent neither the objective experience nor human experience, and that communication and truth were therefore impossible. Plato maintained that communication is possible because language represents ideas and concepts that exist independently of, and prior to, language. During

7008-470: The new Nicaraguan government. Sandinista defector Álvaro Baldizón confirmed that Cuban influence in Nicaragua's Interior Ministry (MINT) was more extensive than was widely believed at the time, and Cuban "advice" and "observations" were treated as though they were orders. The DI sought to aid the growing Puerto Rican separatist movement. Dr. Daniel James testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee that

7104-414: The only gene that has definitely been implicated in language production is FOXP2 , which may cause a kind of congenital language disorder if affected by mutations . The brain is the coordinating center of all linguistic activity; it controls both the production of linguistic cognition and of meaning and the mechanics of speech production. Nonetheless, our knowledge of the neurological bases for language

7200-452: The opposite view. Around the turn of the 20th century, thinkers began to wonder about the role of language in shaping our experiences of the world – asking whether language simply reflects the objective structure of the world, or whether it creates concepts that in turn impose structure on our experience of the objective world. This led to the question of whether philosophical problems are really firstly linguistic problems. The resurgence of

7296-638: The passports of Latin Americans who trained in Cuba to become guerrillas. Shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Moscow invited 1,500 DI agents, including Che Guevara , to the KGB's Moscow Center for intensive training in intelligence operations. Dismayed by Cuban debâcles in Zaire (1977 and 1978) and in Bolivia (1966–67) as well as by a perceived growing independence from Moscow,

7392-735: The philosophers Kant and Descartes, understands language to be largely innate , for example, in Chomsky 's theory of universal grammar , or American philosopher Jerry Fodor 's extreme innatist theory. These kinds of definitions are often applied in studies of language within a cognitive science framework and in neurolinguistics . Another definition sees language as a formal system of signs governed by grammatical rules of combination to communicate meaning. This definition stresses that human languages can be described as closed structural systems consisting of rules that relate particular signs to particular meanings. This structuralist view of language

7488-426: The philosophy of language, the view of linguistic meaning as residing in the logical relations between propositions and reality was developed by philosophers such as Alfred Tarski , Bertrand Russell , and other formal logicians . Yet another definition sees language as a system of communication that enables humans to exchange verbal or symbolic utterances. This definition stresses the social functions of language and

7584-540: The philosophy of language, the view of pragmatics as being central to language and meaning is often associated with Wittgenstein's later works and with ordinary language philosophers such as J. L. Austin , Paul Grice , John Searle , and W.O. Quine . A number of features, many of which were described by Charles Hockett and called design features set human language apart from communication used by non-human animals . Communication systems used by other animals such as bees or apes are closed systems that consist of

7680-474: The rank of lieutenant . The Soviet Union 's KGB and the Cuban DI had a complex relationship, marked by times of extremely close cooperation and by periods of extreme competition. The Soviet Union saw the new revolutionary government in Cuba as an excellent proxy agent in areas of the world where Soviet involvement lacked popular local-level support. Nikolai Leonov , the KGB chief in Mexico City , one of

7776-461: The same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title General Intelligence Directorate . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=General_Intelligence_Directorate&oldid=1103644721 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description

7872-444: The set of utterances that can be produced from those rules. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings . Oral, manual and tactile languages contain a phonological system that governs how symbols are used to form sequences known as words or morphemes , and a syntactic system that governs how words and morphemes are combined to form phrases and utterances. The scientific study of language

7968-413: The signs in human fossils that may suggest linguistic abilities are: the size of the brain relative to body mass, the presence of a larynx capable of advanced sound production and the nature of tools and other manufactured artifacts. It was mostly undisputed that pre-human australopithecines did not have communication systems significantly different from those found in great apes in general. However,

8064-442: The space between two inhalations. Acoustically , these different segments are characterized by different formant structures, that are visible in a spectrogram of the recorded sound wave. Formants are the amplitude peaks in the frequency spectrum of a specific sound. Vowels are those sounds that have no audible friction caused by the narrowing or obstruction of some part of the upper vocal tract. They vary in quality according to

8160-710: The structures of language as having evolved to serve specific communicative and social functions. Language is processed in many different locations in the human brain , but especially in Broca's and Wernicke's areas . Humans acquire language through social interaction in early childhood, and children generally speak fluently by approximately three years old. Language and culture are codependent. Therefore, in addition to its strictly communicative uses, language has social uses such as signifying group identity , social stratification , as well as use for social grooming and entertainment . Languages evolve and diversify over time, and

8256-550: The study of language in pragmatic , cognitive , and interactive frameworks, as well as in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology . Functionalist theories tend to study grammar as dynamic phenomena, as structures that are always in the process of changing as they are employed by their speakers. This view places importance on the study of linguistic typology , or the classification of languages according to structural features, as processes of grammaticalization tend to follow trajectories that are partly dependent on typology. In

8352-452: The view that language plays a significant role in the creation and circulation of concepts, and that the study of philosophy is essentially the study of language, is associated with what has been called the linguistic turn and philosophers such as Wittgenstein in 20th-century philosophy. These debates about language in relation to meaning and reference, cognition and consciousness remain active today. One definition sees language primarily as

8448-449: The visual modality, and braille writing uses the tactile modality. Human language is unusual in being able to refer to abstract concepts and to imagined or hypothetical events as well as events that took place in the past or may happen in the future. This ability to refer to events that are not at the same time or place as the speech event is called displacement , and while some animal communication systems can use displacement (such as

8544-418: The vocal cords are set in vibration by airflow during the production of the sound. Voicing is what separates English [s] in bus ( unvoiced sibilant ) from [z] in buzz ( voiced sibilant ). Some speech sounds, both vowels and consonants, involve release of air flow through the nasal cavity, and these are called nasals or nasalized sounds. Other sounds are defined by the way the tongue moves within

8640-561: Was broadened from Indo-European to language in general by Wilhelm von Humboldt . Early in the 20th century, Ferdinand de Saussure introduced the idea of language as a static system of interconnected units, defined through the oppositions between them. By introducing a distinction between diachronic and synchronic analyses of language, he laid the foundation of the modern discipline of linguistics. Saussure also introduced several basic dimensions of linguistic analysis that are still fundamental in many contemporary linguistic theories, such as

8736-605: Was captured shortly after the jail break, but after a plane carrying executives from the United Fruit Company was hijacked by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), he was freed and allowed to travel to Cuba. DI chief Manuel Piñeiro commented that "of all the countries in Latin America , the most active work being carried out by us is in Nicaragua." The DI, with Fidel Castro's personal blessing, also collaborated with

8832-783: Was credited with the 1979 unification of Puerto Rico's five principal terrorist groups into the Cuban-directed National Revolutionary Command (CRN). According to the former chief investigator of the U.S. Senate, Alfonso Tarabochia, the DGI began directing criminal activities in Puerto Rico and the eastern and midwestern United States as early as 1974. That June the secretary general of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party , Juan Marí Bras , met in Havana with Fidel Castro to consolidate party solidarity. Beginning in September 1974,

8928-433: Was first introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure , and his structuralism remains foundational for many approaches to language. Some proponents of Saussure's view of language have advocated a formal approach which studies language structure by identifying its basic elements and then by presenting a formal account of the rules according to which the elements combine in order to form words and sentences. The main proponent of such

9024-403: Was held. In another example, the ritual language Damin had a heavily reduced oral vocabulary of only a few hundred words, each of which was very general in meaning, but which were supplemented by gesture for greater precision (e.g., the single word for fish, l*i , was accompanied by a gesture to indicate the kind of fish). Secondary modes of language, by which a fundamental mode is conveyed in

9120-775: Was in regular contact with the StB station chief in Cuba and appreciated the quality of Czechoslovak intelligence reports that were important for sustaining the Cuban revolution in its early years. Cubans wanted to rely on the StB in building DI and the Ministry of Interior. However the Soviets soon stopped such initiatives. Czechoslovak intelligence cooperated with DI on top secret Operation Manuel which lasted from 1962 to 1969, moving 1179 Latin American revolutionaries via Prague back to Latin America. Czechoslovak intelligence helped DI to falsify

9216-501: Was killed by the FBI on Friday, September 23, 2005, in the town of Hormigueros, Puerto Rico. Camp Matanzas is a training facility operated by the DI and is located outside Havana since early 1962. It has hosted the likes of Carlos the Jackal . 23°08′18″N 82°23′55″W  /  23.1384°N 82.3986°W  / 23.1384; -82.3986 Languages Language is

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