Anthropology 1600, Professor T. C. Bestor
Ten fundamental characteristics of human language
as system of communications
(Charles Hockett)
• Human language is learned
1) acquired through cultural transmission
2) speakers of one language can learn another
• . . . is discrete – language consists of minimal units
• . . . is recombinable – these minimal units can be combined in
infinite varieties
• . . . is unconscious/intuitive – structural knowledge of a
language is not necessarily conscious or articulated by its
speakers
• . . . is interchangeable – any speaker potentially can create
and utter any message
• . . . is reflexive – people can talk about language; language
has the ability to refer to itself
• . . . is arbitrary – meaning depends on arbitrary association of
meaning with sign or symbol, on conventions shared by
sender and receiver of message
• . . . is redundant – language contains redundant
communicative elements (message may be conveyed or
reinforced twice in same utterance)
• . . . can displace – language can convey imaginary, distant,
past, present, future, conjectural, and/or counterfactual
statements (including lies)
• . . . is productive – a speaker can create totally novel
statements and a listener can understand them