Language is the most ancient and main property of man as a biological species, which distinguishes him from other living beings. In linguistics, the science of language, the following definition is used: language is a sign system, created naturally or artificially, with the help of which people communicate and shape their mental activity.
Origin of language
Education and the formation of the language, along with labor activity, played a key role in the development of man as a rational being. One of the most important problems in the question of the origin of language is its ability to reflect reality. Words, as signs of a language, bear no resemblance to the subject they designate. Nevertheless, a distinct image of an object appears in the mind of a person when he hears or sees the word denoting it.
To understand how a language appeared, the sound complex of which itself does not reflect anything, scientists are developing various theories of the origin of the language. The onomatopoeic theory considers the origin of the first words asreproduction of the sounds and noises of nature. However, it cannot explain the presence of different sound shells for the same phenomenon in different languages. According to the interjection theory, the basis of the original word is an emotional exclamation or cry denoting a person's state. This theory, in turn, does not explain the diversity of the language, which could not have come from interjections alone.
Some scientists suggest that the first words were nouns, a person initially sought to reflect the objects and phenomena of reality. Others believe that verb forms are primary, a person first of all performed an action and already built a picture of the world on its basis.
Thus, each theory of the origin of language depends on the function assigned to it.
Language functions
The essence of a language, its main characteristics are manifested in its functions. Among the large number of language functions, the most significant ones are distinguished.
- Communicative function. By definition, language is the primary means of human communication.
- Thinking or cognitive function. Language serves as the main means of forming and expressing mental activity.
- Cognitive function. Language allows you to create new words and concepts, and also acts as a means of storing and transmitting information.
- Other functions (phatic, emotive, appellative, aesthetic, etc.).
Language and speech
The term language cannot be identified with the conceptspeech. First of all, language is a means of communication, and speech is its embodiment. The main characteristic of language is its abstractness and formality, while speech is characterized by materiality, because it consists of articulated sounds that are perceived by the ear.
Unlike a stable and static language, speech is an active and dynamic phenomenon. It is worth noting that the language is a public property and reflects the picture of the world of the people who speak it, and speech, in turn, is purely individual and reflects the experience of a particular person. Language, as a complex sign system, has a level organization, while speech is characterized by a linear organization. And finally, the language does not depend on the specific situation and environment, while speech is conditioned contextually and situationally. Thus, we can say that language is related to speech, as the general is to the particular.
Units and language levels
The basic units of language are phoneme, morpheme, word and sentence. In accordance with each unit, a separate language level is formed. So the lowest level is phonetic, which consists of the simplest language units - phonemes. The phoneme itself has no meaning and acquires a meaningful function only as part of the morpheme. A morpheme (morpheme level), in turn, is the shortest meaningful unit of a language. There are derivational (form words) and grammatical (form word forms) morphemes.
A word (lexico-semantic level) is the main meaningful unit of a language that canhave syntactic independence. It serves to designate objects, phenomena, processes and properties. Words are divided into certain groups: a system of parts of speech (based on grammatical features), a system of synonyms and antonyms (based on semantic relations), groups of archaisms, historicisms and neologisms (in a historical perspective), etc.
A sentence (syntactic level) is a combination of words that expresses a certain idea. The sentence is characterized by semantic and intonational completeness and structure. Distinguish between simple and complex sentences. It should be noted that the unit of each level of the language is an element in the construction of the unit of the next level.
Languages of the world
According to various estimates, there are about 7,000 languages in the world. All of them are divided into the following groups:
- common and non-common;
- written and unwritten;
- "living" and "dead";
- artificial and natural.
On the basis of linguistic affinity, a genetic classification of languages has been created, according to it, there is one more definition of a language. This is, first of all, the attitude to a certain language-ancestor. As a rule, the Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan and Ural-Altaic families of languages are distinguished. All languages of one family are based on one parent language.
Russian language
Russian is one of the East Slavic languages, is part of the Indo-European language family and is a language of world significance. Russian is the national language of the Russian people. ATThe Russian language uses writing, which is based on the Russian alphabet, which goes back to the Cyrillic alphabet. At the same time, in Russian, not all, but only the main sounds of speech are indicated by letters. So the number of letters in the alphabet is 33, and the sound system contains 43 sounds, of which 6 are vowels and 37 are consonants. The classification of the sounds of the Russian language is based on the articulatory properties of speech sounds. In this case, sounds are distinguished by the way they are pronounced and by the parts of the speech apparatus involved in their pronunciation.
There is also a classification of the sounds of the Russian language according to acoustic features. This takes into account the participation of voice and noise in the formation of sound. Russian is one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn.
Thus, we can give the following definition: "Language is a complex multi-valued concept, in which it is considered primarily as a multi-level sign system, which is in organic unity with human thinking."
