Vehicle for the expression or exchanging of thoughts, concepts, knowledge, and information as well as the fixing and transmission of experience and knowledge. It is based on cognitive processes, subject to societal factors and subject to historical change and development. In this definition, language refers to a specific form of expression that is restricted to humans, and differs from all other possible languages, such as animal communication and artificial languages through creativity, the ability to make conceptional abstractions, and the possibility of metalinguistic reflection. (alsolinguistic theory, origin of language,philosophy of language)
1 In linguistics, the ambiguity of the term language (to be understood as ‘language,’ ‘linguistic competence,’ and ‘individual language’) is differentiated and clarified depending on the given theoretical concept and interest through abstraction and delimitation of subaspects. In this process the following concepts are distinguished (with varying terminology). (a) A specific system of signs and combinatory rules which are arbitrary but passed on as conventions. Such linguistic systems, which F.de Saussure calls langue (langue vs parole), are the object of structural investigations, while research oriented towards a generative understanding of language attempts to describe the underlying linguistic competence of a speaker as well as the speaker’s creative ability to produce a potentially infinite number of sentences, depending on his/her communicative needs. Transformational grammar is based on this kind of dynamic understanding of language. (b) Language as an individual activity, as a concrete speech act, undertaken on the basis of (a). In this sense one also speaks of ‘parole’ (de Saussure) or ‘performance’ (N. Chomsky). On the theoretical justification of these differentiations langue vs parole,competence vs performance. To what extent single speech acts form the empirical basis for linguistic studies on the description of the underlying grammatical system depends on the respective theoretical conception or on the extent of idealization of the object of study.
2 Genetically innate human capacity based on neurophysiological processes for directing cognitive and communicative processes (corresponding to de Saussure’s ‘faculté de langue’). This is the primary object of study of neurophysiology, psychology, and others. Linguistic investigations in this area (such as problems of language acquisition and aphasia) are perforce of an interdisciplinary nature, as can be seen in such terms as psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics.
4 In semiotics and information theory, a system of signs used for communication. This includes, in addition to natural languages, artificial languages such as programming languages, formal languages of logic and mathematics, semaphore, and animal languages.
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