Discreteness: Language can be said to be built up from discrete units (eg. phonemes in human
language). Exchanging such discrete units causes a change in the meaning of a signal. This is an abrupt
change, rather than a continuous change of meaning (eg. "cat" doesn't gradually change in meaning to
"bat", but changes abruptly in meaning at some point. Speech loudness and pitch can, on the other hand
be changed continuously without abrupt changes of meaning