In sociolinguistics , an abstand language is a language variety or cluster of varieties with significant linguistic distance from all others, while an ausbau language is a standard variety, possibly with related dependent varieties . Heinz Kloss introduced these terms in 1952 to denote two separate and largely independent sets of criteria for recognizing a "language":
161-454: Multilingualism is the use of more than one language , either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. When the languages are just two, it is usually called Bilingualism . It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population . More than half of all Europeans claim to speak at least one language other than their mother tongue ; but many read and write in one language. Being multilingual
322-478: A Dachsprache for a number of quite different Romansh language forms spoken in parts of Switzerland . Similarly, Standard Basque and the Southern Quechua literary standard were both developed as standard languages for dialect continua that had historically been thought of as discrete languages with many dialects and no "official" dialect. Standard German and Italian , to some extent, function in
483-421: 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
644-470: A dialect continuum have been standardized, so that they are commonly considered distinct languages even though they may be mutually intelligible . The continental Scandinavian languages offer a commonly cited example of this situation. One of the applications of this theoretical framework is language standardization (examples since the 1960s including Basque and Romansh ). Abstandsprache means "language by virtue of linguistic distance". Kloss suggested
805-661: A dialect continuum . An abstand language does not need to have a standard form. This is often the case with minority languages used within a larger state, where the minority language is used only in private, and all official functions are performed in the majority language. The German verb ausbauen ( pronounced [ˈaʊ̯sˌbaʊ̯ən] , literally "to build out") expresses core meanings of "expanding" something or "developing something to completion", e.g. adding to an existing structure. (Croatian linguist Žarko Muljačić [ hr ] translated Ausbausprache into French as langue par élaboration .) Kloss suggested
966-452: A pluricentric language . Examples include British and American Standard English , Standard Austrian German and German Standard German , or European and Brazilian variants of Portuguese . High Hindi and Urdu also have a common dialect basis ( Dehlavi ). The same is the case with Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin, which also have the same dialect basis ( Shtokavian ), and consequently constitute four standard variants of
1127-411: A "threshold" literacy proficiency. Some researchers use age three as the age when a child has basic communicative competence in their first language (Kessler, 1984). Children may go through a process of sequential acquisition if they migrate at a young age to a country where a different language is spoken, or if the child exclusively speaks his or her heritage language at home until he or she is immersed in
1288-504: 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
1449-745: A better ability to analyze abstract visual patterns. Students who receive bidirectional bilingual instruction where equal proficiency in both languages is required will perform at an even higher level. Examples of such programs include international and multi-national education schools. A multilingual person is someone who can communicate in more than one language actively (through speaking, writing, or signing). Multilingual people can logically speak any language they write in (aside from mute multilingual people), but they cannot necessarily write in any language they speak. More specifically, bilingual and trilingual people are those in comparable situations involving two or three languages, respectively. A multilingual person
1610-584: A certain very marginally enhanced or no different executive function , and older onset for dementia . More recently, however, this claim has come under strong criticism with repeated failures to replicate. Yet, many prior studies do not reliably quantify samples of bilinguals under investigation. An emerging perspective is that studies on bilingual and multilingual cognitive abilities need to account for validated and granular quantifications of language experience in order to identify boundary conditions of possible cognitive effects. Second language acquisition results in
1771-411: 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
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#17327799307311932-493: 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
2093-528: A consequence of objectively high lexical and grammatical similarities between the languages themselves (e.g., Norwegian and Swedish), whereas the former is a property of one or more persons and is determined by subjective or intersubjective factors such as the respective languages' prevalence in the life history (including family upbringing, educational setting, and ambient culture) of the person or persons. In sequential bilingualism , learners receive literacy instruction in their native language until they acquire
2254-475: A continuum between internationalization and localization . Due to the status of English in computing , software development nearly always uses it (but not in the case of non-English-based programming languages ). Some commercial software is initially available in an English version, and multilingual versions, if any, may be produced as alternative options based on the English original. The first recorded use of
2415-432: A continuum between internationalization and localization : Translating the user interface is usually part of the software localization process, which also includes adaptations such as units and date conversion. Many software applications are available in several languages, ranging from a handful (the most spoken languages ) to dozens for the most popular applications (such as office suites , web browsers , etc.). Due to
2576-522: A culture; it is not universal. Rhetoric , then, is not universal either, but varies from culture to culture and even from time to time within a given culture. Language teachers know how to predict the differences between pronunciations or constructions in different languages, but they might be less clear about the differences between rhetoric, that is, in the way they use language to accomplish various purposes, particularly in writing. People who learn multiple languages may also experience positive transfer –
2737-443: A different language from the source text; macaronic texts which mix together two or more languages with the expectation that the reader will understand both; the existence of separate sacred and vernacular languages (such as Church Latin vs. common forms of Latin , and Hebrew vs. Aramaic and Jewish languages ); and the frequency of linguistic borrowings and other results of language contact . The definition of multilingualism
2898-421: 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
3059-606: 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,
3220-455: A global lingua franca , sometimes results in majority bilingualism even when the countries in question have just one domestic official language. This occurs especially in regions such as Scandinavia and the Benelux , as well as among Germanophones , but the phenomenon has also been expanding into some non-Germanic countries. One view is that of the linguist Noam Chomsky in what he calls
3381-718: A language (including but not limited to its idioms and eponyms ) without first understanding the culture and history of the region in which that language evolved, as a practical matter an in-depth familiarity with multiple cultures is a prerequisite for high-level multilingualism. This knowledge of cultures individually and comparatively can form an important part of both what one considers one's identity to be and what others consider that identity to be. Some studies have found that groups of multilingual individuals get higher average scores on tests for certain personality traits such as cultural empathy , open-mindedness and social initiative. The idea of linguistic relativity , which claims that
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#17327799307313542-582: A large degree. Approximately at the same time, Dutch started to replace Low German as a roof of the Low German dialects in the Netherlands that form today's Dutch Low Saxon group, and most Central German dialects went under the "roof" of the evolving High German . Low German ceased to be spoken on the eastern rim of the Baltic Sea. Today, its dialects surviving in northern Germany have come under
3703-640: A lexical deficit due to second language acquisition and bilingualism results in decreased verbal fluency. Bilingual and multilingual individuals are shown to have superior auditory processing abilities compared to monolingual individuals. Several investigations have compared auditory processing abilities of monolingual and bilingual individuals using tasks such as gap detection, temporal ordering, pitch pattern recognition etc. In general, results of studies have reported superior performance among bilingual and multilingual individuals. Furthermore, among bilingual individuals, one's level of proficiency in one's second language
3864-411: A native language but who have children who do speak English natively, usually in part because those children's education has been conducted in English; while the immigrant parents can understand both their native language and English, they speak only their native language to their children. If their children are likewise receptively bilingual but productively English-monolingual, throughout the conversation
4025-685: 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
4186-766: A new one. Once they pass an age that seems to correlate closely with the critical period , around the age of 12, total loss of a native language is not typical, although it is still possible for speakers to experience diminished expressive capacity if the language is never practiced. There is no evidence for a bilingual advantage in executive function and there is a small bilingual disadvantage in verbal fluency. Some initial reports concluded that people who use more than one language have been reported to be more adept at language learning compared to monolinguals, and this idea persisted in part due to publication bias . Current meta-analyses find no effect. Individuals who are highly proficient in two or more languages have been reported to have
4347-591: A particular approach. There are several instances of languages and language pairs that have undergone role changes over time. Low German , for instance, was both an Abstand language and a roof of local dialects in the Netherlands and Germany and in parts of the Baltic states and their formerly German vicinity. With the end of the Hanseatic League , Low German lost its status as an official language to
4508-421: A prodigious capacity for languages. Savant syndrome is almost always associated with an increased memory capacity of some sort, which can, for certain savants, aid in storing and retrieving knowledge of different languages. In 1991, for example, linguists Neil Smith and Ianthi-Maria Tsimpli described a man, named Christopher, who learned sixteen languages even with a non-verbal IQ between 40 and 70. Christopher
4669-416: 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
4830-411: 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
4991-524: A school setting where instruction is offered in a different language. In simultaneous bilingualism , the native language and the community language are simultaneously taught. The advantage is literacy in two languages as the outcome. However, the teacher must be well-versed in both languages and also in techniques for teaching a second language. The phases children go through during sequential acquisition are less linear than for simultaneous acquisition and can vary greatly among children. Sequential acquisition
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5152-641: 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
5313-452: A shift in situation or context, independent of language." However, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, which states that a language shapes our vision of the world, may suggest that a language learned by a grown-up may have much fewer emotional connotations and therefore allow a more serene discussion than a language learned by a child and to that respect more or less bound to a child's perception of
5474-536: 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;
5635-426: 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
5796-442: A strategy where proficiency is lacking. Such strategies are common if the vocabulary of one of the languages is not very elaborated for certain fields, or if the speakers have not developed proficiency in certain lexical domains, as in the case of immigrant languages. This code-switching appears in many forms. If a speaker has a positive attitude towards both languages and towards code-switching, many switches can be found, even within
5957-521: 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,
6118-650: 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 ,
6279-488: 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
6440-444: A unitary self, but to enact different kinds of selves, and different linguistic contexts create different kinds of self-expression and experiences for the same person." However, there has been little rigorous research done on this topic and it is difficult to define "personality" in this context. François Grosjean wrote: "What is seen as a change in personality is most probably simply a shift in attitudes and behaviors that correspond to
6601-543: 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
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6762-628: A way to provide developers a set of free tooling that enabled adding languages to their apps with just a few clicks, in large part due to the integration of a free, unlimited license to both the Microsoft Translator machine translation service and the Microsoft Language Platform service, along with platform extensibility to enable anyone to add translation services into MAT. Microsoft engineers and inventors of MAT Jan A. Nelson and Camerum Lerum have continued to drive
6923-414: A year later found that switching to a second language seems to exempt bilinguals from social norms and constraints, such as political correctness . In 2014, another study showed that people using a foreign language are more likely to make utilitarian decisions when faced with moral dilemmas, such as the trolley problem and its variations. Participants in this study chose the utilitarian option more often in
7084-415: 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
7245-459: Is a cognitive process , rather than a language acquisition device, as the school led by Stephen Krashen suggests, there would only be relative, not categorical, differences between the two types of language learning. Rod Ellis quotes research finding that the earlier children learn a second language, the better off they are, in terms of pronunciation . European schools generally offer secondary language classes for their students early on, due to
7406-480: Is a cluster of varieties that is distinctly separate from any other language. European examples include Basque and Breton . Kloss also spoke of degrees of abstand between pairs of varieties. He did not specify how the differences between two varieties would be measured, assuming that linguists would apply objective criteria. A standard linguistic criterion is mutual intelligibility , though this does not always produce consistent results, for example when applied to
7567-612: Is a fusion of two or more languages that is grammatically simplified but can be understood by native speakers of any of the original languages. Some pidgins develop into "real" creole languages (such as Papiamento in Curaçao or Singlish in Singapore ), while others simply evolve into slangs or jargons (such as Helsinki slang , which remains more or less mutually intelligible with standard Finnish and Swedish). In other cases, prolonged influence of languages on each other may have
7728-472: 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
7889-421: Is a more complex and lengthier process, although there is no indication that non-language-delayed children end up less proficient than simultaneous bilinguals, so long as they receive adequate input in both languages. A coordinate model posits that equal time should be spent in separate instruction of the native language and the community language. The native language class, however, focuses on basic literacy while
8050-611: Is a subject of debate in the same way as that of language fluency. At one end of the linguistic continuum, multilingualism may be defined as the mastery of more than one language. The speaker would have knowledge of and control over the languages equivalent to that of a native speaker. At the opposite end of the spectrum would be people who know enough phrases to get around as a tourist using the alternate language. Since 1992, Vivian Cook has argued that most multilingual speakers fall somewhere between minimal and maximal definitions. Cook calls these people multi-competent . In addition, there
8211-463: Is advantageous for people wanting to participate in trade, globalization and cultural openness. Owing to the ease of access to information facilitated by the Internet, individuals' exposure to multiple languages has become increasingly possible. People who speak several languages are also called polyglots . Multilingual speakers have acquired and maintained at least one language during childhood,
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#17327799307318372-589: Is based on the observation of the Swedish language in Finland in environments such as schools is subordinated to the majority language Finnish for practical and social reasons, despite the positive characteristics associated with mutual language learning. Whenever two people meet, negotiations take place. If they want to express solidarity and sympathy, they tend to seek common features in their behavior. If speakers wish to express distance towards or even dislike of
8533-588: 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
8694-563: 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
8855-534: 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
9016-476: Is generally referred to as a polyglot , a term that may also refer to people who learn multiple languages as a hobby. Multilingual speakers have acquired and maintained at least one language during childhood, the so-called first language (L1). The first language (sometimes also referred to as the mother tongue) is acquired without formal education, by mechanisms heavily disputed. Children acquiring two languages in this way are called simultaneous bilinguals. Even in
9177-545: Is no consistent definition of what constitutes a distinct language. For instance, scholars often disagree whether Scots is a language in its own right or merely a dialect of English . Furthermore, what is considered a language can change, often for purely political reasons. One example is the creation of Serbo-Croatian as a standard language on the basis of the Eastern Herzegovinian dialect to function as umbrella for numerous South Slavic dialects; after
9338-533: Is not uncommon for speakers to use a different language within the same conversation. This phenomenon is found, amongst other places, in Scandinavia . Most speakers of Swedish , Norwegian and Danish can communicate with each other speaking their respective languages, while few can speak both (people used to these situations often adjust their language, avoiding words that are not found in the other language or that can be misunderstood). Using different languages
9499-503: 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
9660-414: Is one form of language contact . Multilingualism was common in the past: in early times, when most people were members of small language communities, it was necessary to know two or more languages for trade or any other dealings outside one's town or village, and this holds good today in places of high linguistic diversity such as Sub-Saharan Africa and India . Linguist Ekkehard Wolff estimates that 50% of
9821-407: 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
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#17327799307319982-454: 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
10143-415: 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
10304-435: 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
10465-465: 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
10626-437: 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
10787-469: 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
10948-404: 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:
11109-422: 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 the creation of an infinite number of sentences, and
11270-447: Is typically taught in schools, and it is used as a written language in a wide variety of social and political functions, possibly including that of an official national language. In contrast, varieties that are not ausbau languages are typically only spoken and typically only used in private contexts. Trudgill expands the definition to include related varieties: [A]n Ausbau language is an autonomous standardized variety together with all
11431-741: Is usually called non-convergent discourse , a term introduced by the Dutch linguist Reitze Jonkman. To a certain extent, this situation also exists between Dutch and Afrikaans , although everyday contact is fairly rare because of the distance between the two respective communities. Another example is the former state of Czechoslovakia , where two closely related and mutually intelligible languages ( Czech and Slovak ) were in common use. Most Czechs and Slovaks understand both languages, although they would use only one of them (their respective mother tongue) when speaking. For example, in Czechoslovakia, it
11592-488: 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
11753-626: The Moselle River valley and neighbouring French département of Moselle ). Other examples of groups of vernaculars lacking abstand internally but that have given rise to multiple ausbau languages are: Persian of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan ( cf. Farsi , Dari , Tajik ); Bulgarian and Macedonian , because they have different dialect bases. Finally, the ausbau languages may be so different that they also constitute abstand languages. Examples include Dutch versus German , Persian versus Pashto , and Tamil versus Telugu . In
11914-634: The Scandinavian dialect continuum spanning Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The three standardized languages Norwegian , Swedish and Danish (or four if Norwegian Bokmål and Nynorsk are distinguished) are mutually distinct ausbau languages, even though speakers of the different standards can readily understand one another. This classification invokes the criterion of social and political functions of language use. The sociolinguist Peter Trudgill has linked Kloss's theoretical framework with Einar Haugen 's framework of autonomy and heteronomy , with
12075-494: 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
12236-425: 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
12397-423: 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
12558-428: The pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language . Standards created from different dialects, but with little abstand , would not be considered separate abstand languages, but constitute distinct ausbau languages, as noted above for Danish , Swedish and Norwegian . The concept of ausbau is particularly important in cases where the local spoken varieties across a larger region form a dialect continuum. In such cases,
12719-503: 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
12880-418: 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
13041-423: The English translation "language by development", referring to the development of a standard variety from part of a dialect continuum : Languages belonging in this category are recognized as such because of having been shaped or reshaped, molded or remolded—as the case may be—in order to become a standardized tool of literary expression. Kloss identified several stages of this development, beginning with use of
13202-402: The English translation "language by distance", referring to linguistic differences rather than geographical separation. Abstand means a distance of ongoing separation, e.g. a clearance by mechanical design. In the context of language varieties, abstand indicates the discontinuity of two dialects; in the words of Kloss, there is a "definite break" between the varieties. An abstand language
13363-470: The Fat Man dilemma when it was presented in a foreign language. For the related Switch Track dilemma, however, the use of a foreign language presented no significant influence on the choices participants made. The authors of this study surmised that a foreign language lacks the emotional impact of one's native language. Because it is difficult or impossible to master many of the high-level semantic aspects of
13524-641: 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
13685-447: 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
13846-564: The breakup of Yugoslavia , it was split into Serbian , Croatian , Bosnian and Montenegrin . Another example is the historical dismissal of Ukrainian as a Russian dialect by the Russian tsars to discourage national feelings. Many small independent nations' schoolchildren are today compelled to learn multiple languages because of international interactions. For example, in Finland, all children are required to learn at least three languages:
14007-922: The case of simultaneous bilinguals, one language usually dominates over the other. In linguistics, first language acquisition is closely related to the concept of a "native speaker". According to a view widely held by linguists, a native speaker of a given language has in some respects a level of skill that a second (or subsequent) language learner cannot easily accomplish. Consequently, descriptive empirical studies of languages are usually carried out using only native speakers. This view is, however, slightly problematic, particularly as many non-native speakers demonstrably not only successfully engage with and in their non-native language societies, but in fact may become culturally and even linguistically important contributors (as, for example, writers, politicians, media personalities and performing artists) in their non-native language. In recent years, linguistic research has focused attention on
14168-608: 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
14329-517: The community according to the functional distribution of the languages involved: Note that the terms given above all refer to situations describing only two languages. In cases of an unspecified number of languages, the terms polyglossia , omnilingualism , and multipart-lingualism are more appropriate. Taxell's paradox refers to the notion that monolingual solutions are essential to the realization of functional bilingualism, with multilingual solutions ultimately leading to monolingualism. The theory
14490-409: The community language class focuses on listening and speaking skills. Being bilingual does not necessarily mean that one can speak, for example, English and French. Research has found that the development of competence in the native language serves as a foundation of proficiency that can be transposed to the second language – the common underlying proficiency hypothesis. Cummins' work sought to overcome
14651-410: 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
14812-461: 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
14973-541: 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
15134-423: The development of new languages by forming connections from one language to another. Second language acquisition results in a lexical deficit. Receptive bilinguals are those who can understand a second language but who cannot speak it or whose abilities to speak it are inhibited by psychological barriers. Receptive bilingualism is frequently encountered among adult immigrants to the U.S. who do not speak English as
15295-444: The development of the tools, working with third parties and standards bodies to ensure that broad availability of multilingual app development is provided. With the release of Windows 10, MAT is now delivering support for cross-platform development for Universal Windows Platform apps as well as for iOS and Android apps. Language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary . It
15456-504: The discreteness of the elements of language, meaning that the elements out of which linguistic signs are constructed are discrete units, e.g. sounds and words, that can be distinguished from each other and rearranged in different patterns; and the productivity of the linguistic system, meaning that the finite number of linguistic elements can be combined into a theoretically infinite number of combinations. Dachsprache This framework addresses situations in which multiple varieties from
15617-495: 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
15778-701: The effect of changing one or both of them to the point a new, non-creole language is born. For example, many linguists believe that the Occitan language and the Catalan language were formed because a population speaking a single Occitano-Romance language was divided by the political spheres of influence of France and Spain, respectively. Yiddish is a complex blend of Middle High German with Hebrew and also has borrowings from Slavic languages. Bilingual interaction can even take place without speakers switching between languages or fusing them together. In certain areas, it
15939-535: The exclusive use of another language, and effectively "become native" in a language that was once secondary after the L1 undergoes total attrition. This is most commonly seen among immigrant communities and has been the subject of substantial academic study. The most important factor in spontaneous, total L1 loss appears to be age; in the absence of neurological dysfunction or injury, only young children typically are at risk of forgetting their native language and switching to
16100-405: The expectations of the native reader. Foreign students who have mastered syntactic structures have still demonstrated an inability to compose adequate themes, term papers, theses, and dissertations. Robert B. Kaplan describes two key words that affect people when they learn a second language. Logic in the popular, rather than the logician's sense of the word, is the basis of rhetoric, evolved out of
16261-413: 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
16422-416: The family as a whole, but the linguistic differences between the family's generations often constitute little or no impairment to the family's functionality. Receptive bilingualism in one language as exhibited by a speaker of another language, or even as exhibited by most speakers of that language, is not the same as mutual intelligibility of languages; the latter is a property of a pair of languages , namely
16583-422: 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
16744-455: The former two cases, scholars do not always agree on the best classification, as they always partake, inadvertently, in the "language making" and "language unmaking" process. The concept of a One Standard German Axiom in that language is a case in point that illustrates the contested nature of the first two types of ausbau languages, occasionally also the third, varying with the degree with which sociolinguistic processes are assigned relevance in
16905-408: 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
17066-413: 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
17227-420: 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
17388-471: The gross domestic production (GDP); the authors state that Switzerland's GDP is augmented by 10% by multilingualism. A study in the United States by O. Agirdag found that bilingualism has substantial economic benefits, as bilingual people were found to earn around $ 3,000 more per year in salary than monolinguals. A study in 2012 has shown that using a foreign language reduces decision-making biases. It
17549-420: 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
17710-431: The human language acquisition device —a mechanism that enables a learner to recreate correctly the rules and certain other characteristics of language used by surrounding speakers. This device, according to Chomsky, wears out over time, and is not normally available by puberty , which he uses to explain the poor results some adolescents and adults have when learning aspects of a second language (L2). If language learning
17871-445: 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
18032-556: The interconnectedness among neighboring countries with different languages. Most European students now study at least two foreign languages, a process strongly encouraged by the European Union . Based on the research in Ann Fathman's The Relationship Between Age and Second Language Productive Ability , there is a difference in the rate of learning of English morphology, syntax and phonology based upon differences in age, but
18193-574: The language people speak influences the way they see the world, can be interpreted to mean that individuals who speak multiple languages have a broader, more diverse view of the world, even when speaking only one language at a time. Some bilinguals feel that their personality changes depending on which language they are speaking; thus multilingualism is said to create multiple personalities. Xiao-lei Wang states in her book Growing up with Three Languages: Birth to Eleven : "Languages used by speakers with one or more than one language are used not just to represent
18354-530: The linguistic argument for bilingual literacy is the length of time necessary to acquire a second language. Previously, children were believed to have the ability to learn a language within a year, but today, researchers believe that within and across academic settings, the period is closer to five years. An interesting outcome of studies during the early 1990s, however, confirmed that students who do complete bilingual instruction perform better academically. These students exhibit more cognitive flexibility , including
18515-408: 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
18676-403: 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
18837-595: 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
18998-572: 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
19159-488: 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
19320-642: The nonstandard dialects from that part of the dialect continuum which are heteronomous with respect to it i.e. dependent on it. Kloss described an ausbau language as providing a "roof" (German: Dach ) over dependent varieties, whereas non-standard varieties without a reference standard were "roofless dialects". He used the term "near-dialectized sister languages" for varieties roofed by a standard variety with which they are related but not mutually intelligible, such as Low Saxon (roofed by Standard German ), Occitan and Haitian Creole (roofed by French ), and Sardinian (roofed by Italian ). Muljačić introduced
19481-414: 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
19642-452: 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
19803-444: The order of acquisition in second language learning does not change with age. In second language class, students commonly face difficulties in thinking in the target language because they are influenced by their native language and cultural patterns. Robert B. Kaplan believes that in second language classes, foreign students' papers may seem out of focus because the foreign student employs rhetoric and sequences of thought that violate
19964-522: The other. The third alternative represents the phenomenon of " code-switching " in which the productively bilingual party to a communication switches languages in the course of that communication. Receptively bilingual persons, especially children, may rapidly achieve oral fluency by spending extended time in situations where they are required to speak the language that they theretofore understood only passively. Until both generations achieve oral fluency, not all definitions of bilingualism accurately characterize
20125-441: The parents will speak their native language and the children will speak English. If their children are productively bilingual, however, those children may answer in their parents' native language, in English, or in a combination of both languages, varying their choice of language depending on factors such as the communication's content, context or emotional intensity and the presence or absence of third-party speakers of one language or
20286-464: The perception propagated in the 1960s that learning two languages made for two competing aims. The belief was that the two languages were mutually exclusive and that learning a second required unlearning elements and dynamics of the first to accommodate the second. The evidence for this perspective relied on the fact that some errors in acquiring the second language were related to the rules of the first language. Another new development that has influenced
20447-417: The person they are speaking to, the reverse is true, and differences are sought. This mechanism also extends to language, as described by the communication accommodation theory . Some multilingual people use code-switching , which involves swapping between languages. In many cases, code-switching allows speakers to participate in more than one cultural group or environment. Code-switching may also function as
20608-735: 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
20769-426: 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
20930-540: 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
21091-461: The population of Africa is multilingual. In multilingual societies, not all speakers need to be multilingual. Some states can have multilingual policies and recognize several official languages, such as Canada (English and French). In some states, particular languages may be associated with particular regions in the state (e.g., Canada) or with particular ethnicities (e.g., Malaysia and Singapore). When all speakers are multilingual, linguists classify
21252-435: The process by which it becomes easier to learn additional languages if the grammar or vocabulary of the new language is similar to those of the languages already spoken. On the other hand, students may also experience negative transfer – interference from languages learned at an earlier stage of development while learning a new language later in life. Translanguaging also supports the acquisition of new languages. It helps
21413-522: The question of where the one language ends and the other starts is often a question more of ausbau than of abstand. In some instances, ausbau languages have been created out of dialects for purposes of nation-building . This applies, for instance, to Luxembourgish vis-a-vis German (the vernaculars in Luxembourg are varieties of Moselle Franconian , which is also spoken in the German sections of
21574-466: The roof of Standard German . Local Low German dialects spoken in the Netherlands have come under the roof of Dutch. This happened despite the effect of notable migration streams in both directions between the Western (Dutch) and Eastern (Prussian, now mainly Polish and Russian) areas of the region of the Low German languages, motivated by both religious intolerance and labour need. In several spots along
21735-485: The same sentence. If however, the speaker is reluctant to use code-switching, as in the case of a lack of proficiency, he might knowingly or unknowingly try to camouflage his attempt by converting elements of one language into elements of the other language through calquing . This results in speakers using terms like courrier noir (literally, mail that is black) in French, instead of the proper word for blackmail in French, chantage . Sometimes pidgins develop. A pidgin
21896-418: The same way. Perhaps the most widely used Dachsprache is Modern Standard Arabic , which links together the speakers of many different, often mutually unintelligible varieties of Arabic . Kloss recognized three degrees of separation between ausbau languages. When two standards are based on identical or near-identical dialects, he considered them as splits of the same standard into two or more, constituting
22057-444: 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
22218-413: 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,
22379-585: The so-called first language (L1). The first language (sometimes also referred to as the mother tongue) is usually acquired without formal education, by mechanisms about which scholars disagree. Children acquiring two languages natively from these early years are called simultaneous bilinguals . It is common for young simultaneous bilinguals to be more proficient in one language than the other. People who speak more than one language have been reported to be better at language learning when compared to monolinguals. Multilingualism in computing can be considered part of
22540-442: 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
22701-418: The statement that a variety is an ausbau language corresponding to the statement that it is used "autonomously" with respect to other related languages. Such a language has an independent cultural status, even though it may be mutually intelligible with other ausbau languages from the same continuum. This typically means that it has its own standardized form independent of neighbouring standard languages, it
22862-423: The status of English in computing , software development nearly always uses it (but see also Non-English-based programming languages ), so almost all commercial software is initially available in an English version, and multilingual versions, if any, may be produced as alternative options based on the English original. The Multilingual App Toolkit (MAT) was first released in concert with the release of Windows 8 as
23023-710: 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
23184-550: 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
23345-407: The term Dachsprache , or "roofing language", for a dialect that serves as a standard language for other dialects. These dialects would usually be in a dialect continuum , but may be so different that mutual intelligibility is not possible between all dialects, particularly those separated by significant geographical distance. In 1982, "Rumantsch Grischun" was developed by Heinrich Schmid as such
23506-440: The two national languages (Finnish and Swedish) and one foreign language (usually English). Many Finnish schoolchildren also study further languages, such as German or Russian. In some large nations with multiple languages, such as India , schoolchildren may routinely learn multiple languages based on where they reside in the country. In many countries, bilingualism occurs through international relations, which, with English being
23667-555: The use of widely known world languages, such as English, as a lingua franca or a shared common language of professional and commercial communities. In lingua franca situations, most speakers of the common language are functionally multilingual. The reverse phenomenon, where people who know more than one language end up losing command of some or all of their additional languages, is called language attrition . It has been documented that, under certain conditions, individuals may lose their L1 language proficiency completely, after switching to
23828-426: The variety for humour or folklore , followed by lyrics and then narrative prose. The next phase, which he considered crucial, was use of the variety for serious non-fiction. From this point, the variety could be further developed for use in technical, scientific or government domains. A standard variety developed in this way can be mutually intelligible with other standard varieties. A commonly cited example occurs in
23989-452: 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
24150-449: 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
24311-418: 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
24472-487: The word multilingual in the English language occurred in the 1830s. The word is a combination of multi- ("many") and - lingual ("pertaining to languages"). The phenomenon of multilingualism is as old as the very existence of different languages. Today, evidence of multilingualism in an area includes things such as bilingual signs , which represent the same message in more than one language. Historical examples include glosses in textual sources, which can provide notes in
24633-401: The world. Many polyglots know up to five or six languages, but the frequency of polyglotism drops off sharply past this point. Those who know more languages than five or six— Michael Erard suggests eleven or more, while Usman W. Chohan suggests six to eight (depending on proficiency) or more—are sometimes classed as hyperpolyglots . Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti , for example, was a Cardinal who
24794-485: Was also reported to influence auditory processing abilities. Bilinguals might have important labor market advantages over monolingual individuals as bilingual people can carry out duties that monolinguals cannot, such as interacting with customers who only speak a minority language. A study in Switzerland has found that multilingualism is positively correlated with an individual's salary, the productivity of firms, and
24955-453: Was born in 1962, and he was diagnosed with brain damage approximately six months after his birth. Despite being institutionalized because he was unable to take care of himself, Christopher had a verbal IQ of 89, could speak English with no impairment, and could learn subsequent languages with apparent ease. This facility with language and communication is considered to be unusual for most diagnosed with savant syndrome. Widespread multilingualism
25116-561: 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
25277-520: Was common to hear two people talking on television each speaking a different language without any difficulty understanding each other. This bilingualism still exists nowadays, although it has started to deteriorate since Czechoslovakia split up. With emerging markets and expanding international cooperation, business users expect to be able to use software and applications in their own language. Multilingualisation (or "m17n", where "17" stands for 17 omitted letters) of computer systems can be considered part of
25438-433: 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
25599-403: 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
25760-466: Was reputed to have spoken anywhere from 30 to 72 languages. The term savant , in a general sense, may refer to any individual with a natural or innate talent for a particular field; however, people diagnosed with savant syndrome are specifically individuals with significant mental disabilities who demonstrate certain profound and prodigious capacities or certain abilities far in excess of what would usually be considered normal, occasionally including
25921-578: Was surmised that the framing effect disappeared when choices are presented in a second language. As human reasoning is shaped by two distinct modes of thought: one that is systematic, analytical and cognition-intensive, and another that is fast, unconscious and emotionally charged, it was believed that a second language provides a useful cognitive distance from automatic processes, promoting analytical thought and reducing unthinking, emotional reaction. Therefore, those who speak two languages have better critical thinking and decision-making skills. A study published
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