Re: Defining "Language"

John Crowe wrote:
> What is your favorite definition? It's hard to find even a mediocre one (but
> I can't come up with a satisfactory answer myself). "means of communication"
> is just too lacking. Here are a few from online dictionaries:
>
> 1 a : the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used
> and understood by a community b  (1) : audible, articulate, meaningful sound
> as produced by the action of the vocal organs  (2) : a systematic means of
> communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs,
> sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings  (3) : the suggestion
> by objects, actions, or conditions of associated ideas or feelings <language
> in their very gesture -- Shakespeare>  (4) : the means by which animals
> communicate  (5) : a formal system of signs and symbols (as FORTRAN or a
> calculus in logic) including rules for the formation and transformation of
> admissible expressions  (6) :
>
> a system of communication with its own set of conventions or special words
>
> a systematic means of communicating by the use of sounds or conventional symbols
I think that b(2) is pretty close to a good definition: "a systematic
means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized
signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings". The main
thing lacking in that definition is the idea of a grammar (particularly
syntax). All languages have some way to distinguish between "the cat saw
the mouse" and "the mouse saw the cat", whether by word order (as in
English) or by marking words in one way or another. This could fall
under "systematic", I guess, but grammar is a particular kind of
systematic arrangement.

The way that the "conventionalized signs" are built is also a feature of
language: a relatively small number of individually meaningless parts
(such as phonemes, brush strokes, hand movements) are combined to form
larger units (morphemes) which have meaning.