Properties of Language
Language has two defining features: arbitrariness and generativity.
Why do these two properties matter?
These two properties are what set human language apart from simpler signaling systems and from pure imitation.
- Arbitrary: words don’t physically resemble what they represent
- Nothing about the sound “dog” is dog-like; in French it’s “chien”
- The mapping is convention, not iconography
- Generative: humans can produce and understand sentences they’ve never heard before
- This is the point Chomsky pressed hardest against Behaviorism
- If language were just imitation plus reinforcement, novel sentences would be impossible