Draft:Original research/Language

Language is a form of communication.

Universals
Def. a "form of communication using words either spoken or gestured with the hands, often with a writing system, usually structured with grammar" is called a language.

"Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication."

Dialects
Def. "[a] variety of a language ... that is characteristic of a particular area, community or group" is called a dialect.

"The difference between a language and a dialect is not always clear, but it is generally considered that people who speak different dialects can understand each other, while people who speak different languages cannot."

Words
Def. "[a] distinct unit of language (sounds in speech or written letters) with a particular meaning, composed of one or more morphemes, and also of one or more phonemes that determine its sound pattern" is called a word.

Communication
Def. "[t]he concept or state of exchanging data or information between entities" is called communication.

Early language
Language is thought to have originated when early hominins started gradually changing their primate communication systems, acquiring the ability to form a theory of other minds and a shared intentionality.

The English word language derives ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s "tongue, speech, language" through Latin lingua, "language; tongue", and Old French language.

The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who defined the modern discipline of linguistics, first explicitly formulated the distinction using the French word langage for language as a concept, langue as a specific instance of a language system, and parole for the concrete usage of speech in a particular language.

When speaking of language as a general concept, definitions can be used which stress different aspects of the phenomenon. These definitions also entail different approaches and understandings of language, and they also inform different and often incompatible schools of linguistic theory.

Critical brain size and language
It "is of interest to obtain correlations between brain size, brain complexity, body size, and measures of "intelligence" and neurophysiologic and psychologic variables of interest. In order to find appropriate measures, one must eliminate many expectations and presuppositions about what will be found and what will not be found.1 Let us examine one example—language itself. Primarily we are interested in human language. Can any correlation be found between brain weight, brain-weight to body-weight ratio (or any of the other biological measurements), and the acquisition of a complex language? Several lines of evidence suggest the possibility that at least in the mammalia there may be a critical absolute brain size below which language, as we know it, is impossible and above which language, as we know it, is possible and even probable [7]. In saying "language as we know it," I am referring not to a literal slavish view of the human languages currently extant; I am referring rather to the ability of these languages to transmit, to store, and to carry from one mind to another mind certain kinds of and degrees of complexity of information. This information can contain data related to the past, the present, and the future and expresses to the mind of the receiver (however imperfectly) the state of mind of the sender, his plans, his actions, his problems. Hypothetically, a nonhuman language may use a logic which is totally strange, an apparent external form which may be bizarre to humans, and contain ways of looking at information which are totally unfamiliar."