Essay | Understanding Several Concepts on Linguistics

1. What are the features of human language? Give examples to illustrate them.

Re: Through the comparison of human and animal communication, American linguist Charles Hocktett has given the defining properties of human language. The features are generally discussed from the angle of structure: the formation of words and phrases, the function of various forms of language and in what cases language is produced. In the following part, I will choose four of them to illustrate.

(1) Arbitrariness

By arbitrariness, "we mean that there is no logical connections between meanings and sounds." (4) That is from the very beginning when human tried to use symbols to communicate, the symbols had no relation in meaning with what they referred to or the similarities to indicate what the real things were.

One reason for the acceptance and memorizing of more and more symbols in communication...
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