e is modality-independent, but written or signed language is the

way to inscribe or encode the natural human speech or gestures.

Depending on philosophical perspectives regarding the definition of

language and meaning, when used as a general concept,
"language" may refer to the cognitive ability to learn and use
systems of complex communication, or to describe the set of rules
that makes up these systems, or the set of utterances that can be
produced from those rules. All languages rely on the process
of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings. Oral, manual and
tactile languages contain a phonological system that governs how
symbols are used to form sequences known as words
or morphemes, and a syntactic system that governs how words and
morphemes are combined to form phrases and utterances.

The scientific study of language is called linguistics. Critical

examinations of languages, such as philosophy of language, the
relationships between language and thought, how words represent
experience, etc., have been debated at least
since Gorgias and Plato in ancient Greek civilization. Thinkers such
as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) have argued that language
originated from emotions, while others like Immanuel Kant (1724–
1804) have argued that languages originated from rational and
logical thought. Twentieth century philosophers such as Ludwig
Wittgenstein (1889–1951) argued that philosophy is really the study
of language itself. Major figures in contemporary linguistics
include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky.

Language is thought to have gradually diverged from earlier primate

communication systems when early hominins acquired the ability to
form a theory of mind and shared intentionality.[3][4] This
development is sometimes thought to have coincided with an
increase in brain volume, and many linguists see the structures of
language as having evolved to serve specific communicative and
social functions. Language is processed in many different locations
in the human brain, but especially in Broca's and Wernicke's areas.
Humans acquire language through social interaction in early
childhood, and children generally speak fluently by approximately
three years old. Language and culture are codependent. Therefore,
in addition to its strictly communicative uses, language has social
uses such as signifying group identity, social stratification, as well as
use for social grooming and entertainment.

Languages evolve and diversify over time, and the history of their
evolution can be reconstructed by comparing modern languages to
determine which traits their ancestral languages must have had in
order for the later developmental stages to occur. A group of
languages that descend from a common ancestor is known as
a language family; in contrast, a language that has been
demonstrated not to have any living or non-living relationship with
another language is called a language isolate. There are also
many unclassified languages whose relationships have not been
established, and spurious languages may have not existed at all.
Academic consensus holds that between 50% and 90% of languages
spoken at the beginning of the 21st century will probably have
become extinct by the year 2100.[5][6][7]

Definitions
Main article: Theory of language
The English word language derives ultimately from Proto-Indo-
European *dn̥ ǵʰwéh₂s "tongue, speech, language"
through Latin lingua, "language; tongue", and Old French language.
[8] The word is sometimes used to refer to codes, ciphers, and other
kinds of artificially constructed communication systems such as
formally defined computer languages used for computer
programming. Unlike conventional human languages, a formal
language in this sense is a system of signs for encoding and
decoding information. This article specifically concerns the
properties of natural human language as it is studied in the
discipline of linguistics.

As an object of linguistic study, "language" has two primary

meanings: an abstract concept, and a specific linguistic system, e.g.
"French". 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 use of speech in a particular language.
[9]

When speaking of language as a general concept, definitions can be

used which stress different aspects of the phenomenon. [10] These
definitions also entail different approaches and understandings of
language, and they also inform different and often incompatible
schools of linguistic theory.[11] Debates about the nature and origin
of language go back to the ancient world. Greek philosophers such
as Gorgias and Plato debated the relation between words, concepts
and reality. Gorgias argued that language could represent neither
the objective experience nor human experience, and that
communication and truth were therefore impossible. Plato
maintained that communication is possible because language
represents ideas and concepts that exist independently of, and prior
to, language.[12]

During the Enlightenment and its debates about human origins, it

became fashionable to speculate about the origin of language.
Thinkers such as Rousseau and Johann Gottfried Herder argued that
language had originated in the instinctive expression of emotions,
and that it was originally closer to music and poetry than to the
logical expression of rational thought. Rationalist philosophers such
as Kant and René Descartes held the opposite view. Around the turn
of the 20th century, thinkers began to wonder about the role of
language in shaping our experiences of the world – asking whether
language simply reflects the objective structure of the world, or
whether it creates concepts that in turn impose structure on our
experience of the objective world. This led to the question of
whether philosophical problems are really firstly linguistic problems.
The resurgence of the view that language plays a significant role in
the creation and circulation of concepts, and that the study of
philosophy is essentially the study of language, is associated with
what has been called the linguistic turn and philosophers such as
Wittgenstein in 20th-century philosophy. These debates about
language in relation to meaning and reference, cognition and
consciousness remain active today.[13]

Mental faculty, organ or instinct

One definition sees language primarily as the mental faculty that
allows humans to undertake linguistic behaviour: to learn languages
and to produce and understand utterances. This definition stresses
the universality of language to all humans, and it emphasizes the
biological basis for the human capacity for language as a unique
development of the human brain. Proponents of the view that the
drive to language acquisition is innate in humans argue that this is
supported by the fact that all cognitively normal children raised in
an environment where language is accessible will acquire language
without formal instruction. Languages may even develop
spontaneously in environments where people live or grow up
together without a common language; for example, creole
languages and spontaneously developed sign languages such
as Nicaraguan Sign Language. This view, which can be traced back
to the philosophers Kant and Descartes, understands language to be
largely innate, for example, in Chomsky's theory of universal
grammar, or American philosopher Jerry Fodor's extreme innatist
theory. These kinds of definitions are often applied in studies of
language within a cognitive science framework and
in neurolinguistics.[14][15]

Formal symbolic system

Another definition sees language as a formal system of signs
governed by grammatical rules of combination to communicate
meaning. This definition stresses that human languages can be
described as closed structural systems consisting of rules that relate
particular signs to particular meanings.[16] This structuralist view of
language was first introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure,[17] and his
structuralism remains foundational for many approaches to
language.[18]
Some proponents of Saussure's view of language have advocated a
formal approach that studies language structure by identifying its
basic elements and then by presenting a formal account of the rules
according to which the elements combine in order to form words
and sentences. The main proponent of such a theory is Noam
Chomsky, the originator of the generative theory of grammar, who
has defined language as the construction of sentences that can be
generated using transformational grammars.[19] Chomsky considers
these rules to be an innate feature of the human mind and to
constitute the rudiments of what language is. [20] By way of contrast,
such transformational grammars are also commonly used in formal
logic, in formal linguistics, and in applied computational linguistics.
[21][22] In the philosophy of language, the view of linguistic meaning
as residing in the logical relations between propositions and reality
was developed by philosophers such as Alfred Tarski, Bertrand
Russell, and other formal logicians.[citation needed]

Tool for communication

A conversation in American Sign

Language
Yet another definition sees language as a system of communication
that enables humans to exchange verbal or symbolic utterances.
This definition stresses the social functions of language and the fact
that humans use it to express themselves and to manipulate objects
in their environment. Functional theories of grammar explain
grammatical structures by their communicative functions, and
understand the grammatical structures of language to be the result
of an adaptive process by which grammar was "tailored" to serve
the communicative needs of its users.[23][24]

This view of language is associated with the study of language

in pragmatic, cognitive, and interactive frameworks, as well as
in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. Functionalist theories
tend to study grammar as dynamic phenomena, as structures that
are always in the process of changing as they are employed by their
speakers. This view places importance on the study of linguistic
typology, or the classification of languages according to structural
features, as processes of grammaticalization tend to follow
trajectories that are partly dependent on typology. [22] In the
philosophy of language, the view of pragmatics as being central to
language and meaning is often associated with Wittgenstein's later
works and with ordinary language philosophers such as J. L.
Austin, Paul Grice, John Searle, and W.O. Quine.[25]

Human versus animal language

Main articles: Animal language and Great ape language
A number of features, many of which were described by Charles
Hockett and called design features[26] set human language apart
from communication used by non-human animals.

Communication systems used by other animals such

as bees or apes are closed systems that consist of a finite, usually
very limited, number of possible ideas that can be expressed. [27] In
contrast, human language is open-ended and productive, meaning
that it allows humans to produce a vast range of utterances from a
finite set of elements, and to create new words and sentences. This
is possible because human language is based on a dual code, in
whic