1.2 Design Features of Language

The term is taken from Charles Hockett; it refers to a number of general properties in respect of which language may be compared with other semiotic systems used by man or by animals.

1) Arbitrariness: It is used to contrast with iconicity (geometrically similar). It is important for versatility/adaptability. It means that there is no natural or inevitable link between the word and the thing it stands for. One sequence of sounds is no better suited to that purpose than another. But there are two ways in which linguistics signs may be motivated. First, there are cases of onomatopoeia, where the sounds of the words mimic some natural sounds. Some may be partially motivated as the word “typewriter.”

2) Duality: also known as “double articulation.” There are two levels of structural organization: phonological and grammatical.

3) Productivity: This enables the speaker to construct and understand an indefinitely large number of utterances, including utterances they have never heard of. (There are utterances whose novelty does not consist solely in that they have never occurred in the previous experience, but in their acknowledged originality of style; and it is for this kind of novelty or originality that the term “creativity” is most appropriate. Whether creativity is a property of language or a characteristic feature of the use of language by particular speakers or writers is still debatable.)

4) Discreteness: The term applies to the signal-elements of semiotic system. If the elements are discrete, in the sense that difference between them is absolute and does not admit of gradation in terms of more or less in quantity, the system is said to be discrete;otherwise it is continuous. The word forms in language are either absolutely the same or absolutely different. Discreteness is not logically dependent upon arbitrariness; but it interacts with it to increase the semiotic flexibility of the system. Two different words may differ minimally and may be forms of lexemes that are not at all similar in meaning (bear—pear).The fact that minimally-distinct forms may be forms of lexemes that differ considerably in meaning and belong to different grammatical classes also has the effect of enhancing their discreteness when channel-noise tends to destroy the physical differences in the signal.

5) Displacement: It is possible for us to refer to objects and events that are remote in time and place from the act of utterance itself. It is first defined by Hockett as “a message is displaced to the extent that the key features in its antecedents and consequences are removed from the time and place of transmission.” (Displacement in children's speech comes much later.)

6) Interchangeability: “Any organism equipped for the transmission of the messages in the system is also equipped to receive messages in the same system” (Hockett, 1958). It is important that we are both senders and receivers using essentially the same system. In many kinds of animal signaling behavior, this is not so. It is not uncommon for members of one sex to produce mating signals which only members of the other sex will respond to.

7) Complete feedback: It refers to the fact that a speaker hears and is able to monitor his own performance. This is not solely a matter of monitoring the signal for audibility, it also involves the checking of one's own utterances for comprehensibility and correctness of formation as they are produced and making adjustments when these are judged necessary.

8) Cultural transmission: It is opposed to genetic transmission, and it has to do with the fact that the ability to speak a language is passed on from one generation to the next by teaching and learning, rather than by instinct. Even the strongest form of the hypothesis that children are born with knowledge of certain universal principles which determine the structure of language must allow that a very considerable part of the structure of a language is acquired. At the same time, it must be recognized that much of the signaling behaviors of other species that was once thought to be purely instinctive is now known to be acquired by a combination of instinct and learning.

9) Learnability: This makes it possible for any human being of whatever race to learn in childhood any language equally well. (It is to decide to what degree learnability applies to non-human semiotic systems. Some birds can imitate the songs of other species.)

10) Reflexivity: Also known as reflexiveness or reflectiveness. It means that languages can refer to and describe themselves. We use language to talk about language. This creates particular problems for linguists. They must have available technical vocabulary to distinguish between the reflexive and non-reflexive use of language. (e.g. Socrates has 8 letters.) No non-human semiotic systems have this property. Human language has both an expressive and descriptive function.