Functional and structural characteristics of verbal language

The arbitrary nature of linguistic signs, Its double articulation and its consequent productivity enable verbal language a qualitatively different and superior functional potential to other languages ​​that lack these characteristics. Verbal language has numerous distinctive features. Arbitrariness of its units and structures: DIRECT RELATIONSHIP (natural and/or analog) between the signs that make up the linguistic system and its referents. Almost absolute independence of grammatical rules and principles regarding the cognitive social functions that linguistic forms play.

Each social or cultural community It has a conventional sign system, as well as the grammatical rules for which its combination and use is governed. This results in cultural concretions other than the language we call languages. These constitute particular cases or manifestations of language whose concrete units and grammar.

That's why Hockett also points out as a characteristic feature of human language the trait called Transmission by Tradition by tradition. The origin and evolution of languages, the differences that exist between them in the way of designating and categorizing reality and their repercussions on thought, have given rise to divergent theoretical positions. Von Humboldt, Cassirer or the hypothesis of determinism linguistic or cultural relativism of Sapiro and Whorf, They accentuate the constitutive function of the object that the language fulfills; All these authors, therefore, refuse to interpret language as a sign system that operates as a mere copy of reality regardless of the subject who knows it. "..., the difference in languages ​​comes less than the difference in sounds and signs than from the conceptions of the world". Languages ​​have numerous common formal characteristics:

• In all of them, basic units such as sounds or words can be identified.
• In all of them there are rules to combine sounds and words and form more complex units such as sentences and texts.
• In all of them there are restrictions on the order in which the different words can form sentences.
• In all of them, prayers express content that seem to adjust to a predicative or propositional structure.

The existence of regularities and similarities such as these languages, but not in the other animal communication systems, has given rise to postulate the hypothesis that certain properties formal language are universal and define specific features of the cognitive skills and potentialities of the human species. Noam Chomsky defines universal grammar capable of identifying and establishing, in a high level of abstraction, the parameters common to the different particular grammar and would constitute first -order evidence to affirm that human linguistic capacity has an important biological base and is, by So much innate.

Focusing our attention on characteristics Of the linguistic signals in themselves, it is worth noting that the most primary human language modality (the oral modality) demands the participation of two channels, the vowel and the auditory, which implies that the users of this language must gather true both anatomical and functional requirements and conditions. The physical characteristics of language sounds (amplitude, frequency and duration) can be seen as related to certain peculiarities of the anatomical configuration of the phoner apparatus in the human species, such as the position of the epiglottis. Other linguistic modalities, such as literacy or manual signs languages ​​rest on visual and motor channels.

From the point of view of physical properties of speech linguist signals, The acoustic signal expands multidirectionally and fades rapidly. The sign is displayed continuously although in reality, the linguistic units are discreet. For language compression, the participation of memory systems capable of temporarily storing and integrating the information transmitted by the physical signal and that allow their processing once it has faded; Likewise, the existence of processes that allow the segmentation of the physical signal in linguistically significant units will be essential. The internal structure of linguistic units has other characteristics: double articulation or duality of patterns that refers to the linguistic system consists of two types of units: non -significant units (phonemes) and meaning units (morphemes, words, words, etc) that result from the combination, under the conditions set by grammar, of the above.

Linguistic systems that participate in patterns duality characteristics turn out to be highly productive, open and flexible. This in turn makes it easier for language users to use it creatively. A set of formal principles or rules that allow the production and understanding of infinite grammatical sentences from a finite number of units was originally established by Chomsky and constitutes one of the basic principles of modern linguistics. This author distinguished between the deep structure (conceptual relationships encoded in the message) and the superficial structure (linguistic units that appear explicitly in that message).

This division is of extraordinary usefulness for the psychological explanation of how language is understood and produced and allows, among the other, the existence of paraphrases. The units that are relevant from the point of view of the construction of the linguistic meaning in verbal messages - phonemes, words, etc. - They are units that admit a discontinuous graphic representation or discreet. These units as Osgood stands out, have a hierarchical and composite internal organization.

They can always be analyzed and described based on lower level units. The combination of these units is not random: it is governed by principles or rules that are collected in the particular grammar. In the case of the oral modality, it is possible to identify other parameters of organizing the messages, which has a suprasegmentary and continuous nature: it is about the prosodic voice parameters that correspond to the volume, the intonation, the timbre the timbre the rhythm of the speech. These parameters carry a lot of emotional and pragmatic information, which makes it very relevant both from the point of view of the study of emotional expression and the study of the use of the use of Language in conversational context.

Functional characteristics of verbal language

This potential modulates the (emotional) expression capacity of humans, but also modulates and enables a particularly complex and distinctive development of the other two basic language functions identified by Bühler: the representational or symbolic function and communicative function and the communicative function.

Representational function characteristics

From a representational point of view, the particular combinatorial quality of verbal language can be related to numerous characteristics of the human species.

First of all (Hockett and Altmann), Verbal language presents the characteristic called Reference or Situational Posture Displacement. Linguistic signs are not necessary or directly linked to referents immediately present in time in space, therefore referring to aspects of present, past or future reality, real or imaginary.

Paulov explained that in the human being, language does not operate as much as a primary signal system but as a second signal system that results from the generalization of the links or associations of the first signal system. The possibility of generalization offered by verbal language is based on the analysis of meaning and determines forms of reaction and response to the environment that are qualitatively higher as a mechanism of adaptation to a medium as flexible and variable as the human social medium.

Situational opening or referential displacement, as well as the character of the second system of signals of human language free to language and its uses of concrete and immediate physical reality and allows it to operate as a representational system of general purposes. Language can be interpreted as a code not linked to specific content, states or needs that, at the same time, enables particular forms of knowledge of reality that are presumably specific to our species.

To the extent that the signs can be created and used in our species to account for meanings not linked to immediate reality, language expands its representational functionality in a practically unlimited way. For example, human language can be applied to describe and analyze the activity of "say". This trait is known as a feature of reflexivity and gives rise to Metalinguistic knowledge. The possibility of analyzing through language one's behavior constitutes the germ of reflexive consciousness and self -control behavior, without a doubt two of the most precious functional achievements of our species.

Human language operates as a second signal system, that is, it does not directly represent or indicate reality but represents mental representations that subjects have and build about that reality (meanings). Linguistic signs imply meanings built by principles of generalization and individualization, which must be known and shared by both the issuer and the reception. The linguistic signs are and exist as such as long as they are constructed signs "by someone and for someone"; also that in its use both simple coding and decoding processes are involved and interpretation processes that are undoubtedly unthinkable outside the scope of our species.

Language not only designates things, not only does the REFERENTIAL FUNCTION OF REPRESENTATION: At the same time that they present them, language also describes things and informs us about how they describe its properties and, consequently, qualifies the same reality that it represents: in this sense, we can say that language is a Analytical representation system.

The representational function of language It has many other supposedly characteristic and specific features:

• The frequent ambiguity of the linguistic statements
• The existence of connotations that modulate the literal or conventional meaning of words based on experience and personal or sociocultural biases of speakers
• The possibility of saying, through language, something false that does not correspond to reality (prevarication)
• The possibility of building messages that transmit contradictory or incongruous information in the plane of the segmental or grammatical linguistic organization and the suprasegmentary or prosodic.

Some of these features seem to also be shared by other non -human species. However, any of them clearly differentiates the natural human language of artificial languages ​​such as computer languages ​​or circulation code.

Characteristics of communicative function

Verbal language is, on the one hand, a biological or natural communication system and also a system specialized in the transmission of significant information, that is, in the transmission of information that is relevant from the point of view of adaptation and behavior of the individual who issues or receives such information.

Secondly, it should be noted that this significant information transmission It can take place both among people and intrapersonally, serving language in this last case as an important instrument for self -regulation of the activity. ¿To what extent the communicative function is carried out in a similar way in verbal language and other languages? The signs already presuppose the realization, by users, of certain active operations of analysis and combination (both in regard to the signifiers - double articulation - and the meanings - generalization and categorization-).

It makes sense to think that the quality of communicative contents will be significantly different also in human language regarding other languages. Differences are related to possibility of transcending The "direct" or primary instrumental use of the signs and with the possibility of using language in our species in the form of apparently more free or selfless communication.

The differential characterization of human language it has to do with the way of theoretically conceptualizing the communication function in itself, and more specifically, with the interpretation of language as a mechanism or natural communication device that however it is not simply a mechanism for transmitting information. The communicative use of language made by human beings and those of other species ¿It must be interpreted only as a coding and decoding process? The acquaintance of the proposed communication model Shannon and Weaver goes in that direction.

Other authors on the contrary highlight the intentionality of linguistic activity, that is, interpretation of the intentional meaning (not only referential) of messages. For Hans Hörmann, The messages do not provide information to the listener, but only guide him in the process of reconstruction of the information that the listener has to perform by himself.

Verbal language (unlike other languages), turns out to be an extraordinarily redundant communication system, since grammatical signals of different types imply the repetition of the same informative content in different parts of the message. The repetition of the same informative content determines that verbal language is easily predictable by the listener, which results from extreme utility given that the auditory linguistic signal, due to its multidirectionality, It is usually affected by a high noise level.

Language predictability It allows linguistic signals to be perceived and interpreted even if they are very degraded. This gives an extraordinary value from the point of view of a language use adapted to the conditions of its natural environment.

Language characteristics as a behavior modality

The main characteristic of language in terms of type of behavior is Freedom of use. Linguistic behavior lacks necessary dependency relationships regarding stimuli (external and internal); On the other hand, language users have the possibility to delay their linguistic responses all the time they deem appropriate. For these reasons, linguist behavior usually considered a prototypy of intentional, intentional and propositional behavior, whose realization presupposes the establishment of goals and objectives about which the subject must have a previous representation and whose explanation requires the resource to teleological explanations and Not only mechanistic. The character propositional of linguistic activity, that requires intentional explanations, allows us to understand that silences (non-conduct examples) have, in the human species such an important informative content from the communicative point of view of our species.

No one cannot communicate. The silences acquire their value precisely by the fact that the human subject has the possibility of deciding whether or not to use the language and when. The rupture of the bond of need that links linguistic behaviors with its most direct stimular background confers a peculiar quality to human language. With "not here and not yet, language allows us to overcome the solid stimulus and response chain ... It allows us to desire an event, plan an action, remember and refer an event."The specificity of the nature of human linguistic responses or behaviors in relation to those of other species, however, beyond its apparent freedom of production.

For example, linguist behavior is formally creative. This means that linguistic behavior cannot be interpreted as a closed repertoire of responses but, rather, as a productive and extremely flexible activity in which the error commission is possible and very likely. Said errors, for obvious reasons, does not take place in the comunication system whose use is directly linked to predetermined stimular conditions. In our species, the obvious fact that the subjects comment errors forces to assume the existence of mechanisms that allow them to realize them and, eventually, correct it.

The peculiarities of human linguistic behavior are also linked to specific conditions of functional organization of the systems responsible for the use of language (in this case, the Retroinformation of messages itself). For SKINNER THE USE OF LANGUAGE It can be seen as instrumental behavior, because it can be related to certain conditions of the issuer or the environment and concern consequences or effects on the environment. The possibility of transforming the behavior, knowledge or emotions of others from language makes this one of the main instruments of interpersonal and social regulation.

Linguistic activity presents many other differential characteristics as a form of behavior or behavior. For example, present the Interchangeability characteristics of roles between sender and receipts and the need for complete retroinformation. The interchangeability of roles and the need for retroinformation can be seen as closely related to the greater probability that we have as a kind of making mistakes in the coding or interpretation of the messages.

These two properties give rise to assuming that the production and compression activities of the language, since they must be carried out simultaneously, share a good part of their structures and functional characteristics, although, they probably also present important difference. The importance of the interlocutor and interactions linguistic And non -linguistic in which the use of language is framed, they show, also, although in a collateral way, the importance that for a correct interpretation of linguistic activity has the analysis of the context in which it develops.

From another perspective, verbal language appears as a highly specialized and complex type of activity. On the one hand, it does not seem to fulfill a primary biological function. On the other hand, its realization implies the contest of types of knowledge and extremely varied processes. From a neurophysiological perspective, the specialized nature of language seems to be endorsed by the confirmation that there are certain peculiarities in the configuration of some of the peripheral systems linked to the linked to the.

Certain data from the anthropological research of the study of the cortical and peripheral structures of other primates and, and especially, of neuropsychological research of the deficit of the use of the language associated with certain brain injuries have also provided, in the last decades, evidence first order about the neurological substrate of human language and its process of Filogenetic development and fixation. Other authors have questioned the specificity of the linguistic process and highlighting their important biological and functional connection points with the language of other species (especially higher primates).

This article is merely informative, in psychology-online we have no power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Functional and structural characteristics of verbal language, We recommend that you enter our category of basic psychology.