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Use of sound signals: The use of sound signals is perhaps the most obvious

characteristic of human language. But this feature is neither unique to human beings

nor all-important. It is not unique to humans as a lot of other animals also use sounds

for communication. And it is not all-important because human beings can transfer

language to visual symbols (as in the case of sign language, or writing) and to tactile

symbols (as in the case of Braille). So, this characteristic is of little use in distinguishing,

human communication from animal communication.

Arbitrariness: On the other hand, if we look at human language-carefully, we see thatexcept in the case of onomatopoeic words or expressions, there is no logical

relationship between the signal and the message. The symbols used by human beings

are arbitrary. For example, there is no logical relationship between the word and the

thing it symbolises. Had there been an intrinsic or logical relationship between the two,

then why would the same thing be called 'pani' in Hindi ? It is all the more interesting to

note that in Hindi itself there is another word for water, i.e jal.

The need for learning: Another interesting thing to notice is that if a human child is

brought up isolation, does not acquire language, whereas birds reared in isolation sing

songs that are Human beings require a long exposure to language in order to aquire

it. This does not mean that human language is totally conditioned by the environment.According to beings are born with an innate 'language acquisition device' (LAD), but

environment plays an important role triggering this innate ability. We should note that

every normal learns an extremely complex grammatical system before is IS of

the greatest wonders of human societies, it cannot be accomplished unless we endowed

with an innate language faculty.

So we can say that although both humans and other animals seem to be genetically

predisposed to acquire language, it seems in humans, this latent potentiality can only

be activitated by long exposure to language, which requires careful learning.

Displacement Human , on the other hand, can communicate about things thatare absent as easily as about things that are present. This phenomenon, is known as

displacement. It occasionally occurs in the animal world, for example, in the

communication of honey bees. If a worker finds a new source of nectar, it returns to

the hive and

performs a complex dance in order to inform the other of the exact of the

nectar, which may be miles away. But even bees are limited in this ability. They can

inform each other only about nectar. Human , can cope with any subject whatever, and

it does not matter how far away the topic of conversation is in time and space.

Creativity Human beings, on the other hand , can talk about anything they like. They

can produce and understand utterances they have never produced or heard before. It isalso not necessary that the situation would make them utter the same thing each time

So we can say that creativity is an important characteristic which distinguishes human

communication from animal communication.

Duality or double articulation human language works very differently. Every

language has a set of Thirty to forty basic sounds which are called phonemes. These

phonemes are generally gmeaningless in isolation. Imagine a person uttering the

sounds 'a Do you think it would be possible for this person to convey any

meaning ? These basic sounds or phonemes become meaningful only they combine

with each other in accordance with the rules of a we can say that human language is

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organised into two levels or layers,a layer of individual sounds which combine with each

other to form the second layer of bigger units like words. This kind of organisation into

two layers is called duality or double articulation.

At one time, it was thought that duality was a characteristic unique to human language.

But now some people claim Duality is also not unique to humans as it is present in bird

song where each individual note is meaningless. It is the combination of notes which

conAveys meaningful messages. However, the complex ways in which words are

combined to create an infinite number of sentences indeed be unique to humans.Patterning Human language, on the other hand, has well defined internal patterns.

There are firm restrictions on which elements (sounds, words, etc.) can occur together,

and in which order. For example, take the sounds 'p', 't', in English. These

sounds can be arranged in the following six ways only : 'spot', 'stop', 'pot', 'pots', 'top'

and Other possibilities like 'tsop', 'ptos', 'opst', are not possible because the rules

of English do not allow these. Similar kind of patterns are followed when words are

combined to form sentences.

Structure dependence Human beings instinctively understand the patterned nature

of language, and manipulate 'structured chunks' of language, they understand that a

group of words can be, at times, the structural equivalent of one word. Consider theFollowing sentences : I The boy who proposed to me gave me a bouquet of flowers He

gave me a really beautiful bouquet of flowers.

This chunk can be rearranged according to the rules of the language, for example, the

rule of passivization:

A bouquet of flowers was given to me by the boy who proposed to me. This kind of a

thing does not seem to be present in any other animal system of communication.

Other characteristics

Human language has many more characteristics besides the ones discussed above.

These are generally not unique to humans. Some of these are :Recipocrity or : any speakerlsender of a linguistic signal also be a listenerlreceiver.

Rapid fading : auditory signals are transitory. They disappear quickly.

Spontaneous usage : speaking'is not something which humans do under compulsion.

They speak spontaneously and out of their own will.

Turn -taking: humans take turns while talking.

Specialisation : vocal signals are used for conveying meaning only. They do normally

any other type of purpose, such as breathing or feeding.

Complete feedback: speakers of a vocal signal receive the themselves as well.