The origin and nature of language - статья на английском языке

The origin of human language is a problem that has exercised the mind and imagination of man from time immemorial; and various 'solutions' to the problem are enshrined in the myths and religious doctrines of many different cultures. The problem was extensively debated in 'naturalistic', as distinct from religious or supernatural, terms by the Greek philosophers, and was of considerable importance in the development of traditional linguistic theory. <...> Since the nineteenth century, however, scholars professionally concerned with the description of language from what we may call a strictly linguistic point of view have tended to dismiss the whole question as unworthy of serious discussion. In the course of the nineteenth century, most linguists became convinced that, however far back one traced the history of particular languages in the texts that have come down to us, it was impossible to discern any signs of evolution from a simpler, or more 'primitive' to a more complex, or more 'advanced', stage of development. This conclusion, that all human languages of which we have any direct evidence are of roughly equal complexity, was reinforced by the detailed study of languages spoken by so-called 'primitive' tribes throughout the world. All the evidences so far accumulated by linguists confirms the view that, despite the many reports brought back by earlier travelers from remote and 'backward' parts, there is no group of human beings, in existence at present or known to have existed in the past, which does not possess a 'fully developed' language. <...> This is the assumption that particular languages (English, Chinese, Swahili, Malay, Eskimo, Amharic, Quechua, etc.) are specific instances of something more general that we may appropriately refer to in the singular as 'language'; in other words, that all human languages have something in common, not shared by anything else, other than the fact that we have learned to apply to each of them the word language (or its equivalent in other languages). <...> Let us grant that, in its most general sense, the term 'languages' may be defined as 'a system of communication'. We might then go on to say that, in the narrower sense in which the linguist uses the term, languages (natural languages, to make use of the convenient and suggestive expression which is commonly employed to distinguish such systems of communication as English or Chinese from the so-called artificial languages constructed by mathematicians, logicians and computer scientists) are the principal systems of communication used by particular groups of human beings within the particular society ('linguistic community') of which they are members; and that English, Chinese, etc., are languages in this sense. <...> There are in fact several such properties that linguists have identified as characteristic of human languages. Two of them only will be mentioned here. The first in duality of structure; and the second, productivity.
By 'duality of structure' (or 'double articulation') linguists refer to the fact that in all languages so far investigated one finds two levels of 'structure', or 'patterning'. There is a 'primary' level, composed of meaningful units: for simplicity, let us call them words. And there is a 'secondary' level, the units of which themselves have no meaning, but which enter into the formation of the primary units. The secondary units of spoken languages are sounds; and of written languages, letters (if the languages in question make use of an alphabetic writing system). <...>
By the 'productivity' of human language is meant the ability that we all have to construct and understand an indefinitely large number of sentences in our native language, including sentences that we have never heard before, and to do this, for the most part, 'naturally' and unreflectingly, without the conscious application of grammatical rules. <...>
These two important properties are universal, in the following sense at least: they have been found in all human languages so far investigated.
(From "New Horizons in Linguistics" edited by John Lyons)