 Good morning. Please respond again. Good morning. Good morning sir. Right. Welcome to this second class in modern linguistics. Today, we will talk about the unique features of natural languages. In many books, this part of the subject is known as design features of language. How is language, how is natural language designed such that it is a unique medium of communication. We will look at some of these features today and in the next few classes. Please try and pay attention. I guess you already know a lot of these things. Some people call it, it is almost obvious and I think they are not wrong. It is almost obvious. It is only that we are looking at these features in a systematic and in a critical manner. Are we together? Are you all right? Are you comfortable? Yes sir. Lovely. The first feature, language. By language I mean all natural languages that you and I speak, untaught language, not computer language, not a spy language. You and I learnt and used after we were born or even before we were born that kind of language. We call it natural language or language only. This language is unique to human beings. No other animals have this language. You might be aware of attempts to teach language to parrots. Do you know any parrot? Do you know any family who keep parrots and teach them language? It used to be very popular. When I was your age, in India it used to be very popular. People would teach parrots, please parrot or please totaram, say sitaram sitaram and parrot would say sitaram sitaram. A parrot also learnt some bad words. We have a joke about political leaders in Bihar that a particular political leader had a parrot in his home and whenever a guest came, he said, because that is how he spoke. These are exaggerations. These are, it is true that parrots and some other creatures can learn a few words, can repeat those few words, but no parrot has looked at the cloud and says, wow what a wonderful cloud today or has written poetry about it or has talked about the weather that will be there tomorrow or that will be there yesterday. There are other creatures, you know dolphins people say who are very intelligent. They do talk. From what we know today, please take it with a pinch of salt. When we say only human beings have this language, we mean in the state of knowledge today. We do not know enough. Every generation, if you look at the history of sciences and there are wonderful books, find time sometime to look at the history of sciences, you will find that every generation has believed that wow, I have got the ultimate truth now. I now know what the reality is and the next generation has proved that the earlier generation was wrong, you know. We believe that the earth is static, the sun goes round, but then somebody came and said the sun is static, the earth goes round. These things happen. So, in the state of knowledge today, we believe that only human beings have natural language. Animals have language of course. They also communicate among themselves, but they have limited domains. They talk about and they have limited range of communication subjects. Say for example, they talk about food or they may talk about say, purity. They may talk about some other kinds of animal things, you know, sex, hunger, fear, you know, but they do not have range like human beings. They do not have subjects like human beings. They do not have domains, kinds of sentences, kinds of words. Their expressions are limited to absolutely few, very few subjects and topics and domains, not like us. We can talk on subject, we can talk off subject, we can talk without subject. Some people actually cannot keep quiet. You know, they are compulsive talkers. If they are with you, they will constantly be talking. Do you have friends like them? Anyone? Say yes or no please. You know, there are actually, you may note, Greek philosophers, Greek philosophers called human beings, homo-loquence, speaking animals. Human beings are talking animals. We are the only ones who can talk. There of course, have been efforts to train other animals into speaking like I told you about parrots. So, in some university in the United States of America, they spent a couple of billion dollars, you know, God bless them and tried to teach some language to chimpanzee in the animal psychology department. Wow. And they found that they had been able to teach the chimpanzee something like a hundred word vocabulary. So, when they said red, the chimpanzee would press a button and point to the red color. And when they said bread, chimpanzee would press another button and point to the picture of bread. If you are interested, I have given web, I have given links. I will mail it to, you know, our class representative and you can check, you can read more about how this experiment was designed, how this experiment worked and what its limitations are. All of these attempts, all of these attempts at teaching language to other creatures are like our attempts at flying. There are people, there are human beings who can jump maybe 2 meters or 3 meters. I do not exactly remember the Olympic record in high jump or in long jump or there are circus artists who can go from one swing to the other. Do you think we can call ourselves flying creatures? Yes or no please? We cannot. That does not make us flying creatures. We can swim in water for some time. Under water also we can survive for 2 or 3 or 5 minutes at the most. Maybe there are people who can be there for longer. But can we compete with fish? Can we call ourselves aquatic creatures, water creatures? Can we? We are not biologically designed that way. So, in the current state of knowledge, if you are interested about dolphins and other aquatic creatures language, I have given another link and I will forward it to you. You can check those links and you can all your own search. I will be very delighted if any one of you can prove that other animals also have the same elaborate language that human beings have. In the state of knowledge today, it seems please note that language is a biological gift to human beings. Language is a biological gift to human beings just as flying is to birds, swimming is to fish, other things are to other creatures. So, God has given us, nature has given us language. Only human beings have it. There are all kinds of language. This term is used for many things. We use it for computer generated language, a spy language, animal language. But the language as we know it in our time is unique to human beings. Look at the examples of some human, some animal communication. Read it. Can any one of you please read it aloud? Can you please slowly and you can rise? Can you please cover my friend? An example of animal communication. When the leader of monkeys was satisfied that the clearing contained nothing, he gave a prodigious leap that sent him crashing into fig tree leaves. Here he paused again and examined the grass field. Then he plucked the first fruit and uttered a series of loud imperative calls, oink oink oink. About half an hour later, monkeys made their way back into the forest calling oink oink to each other in a self-satisfied kind of way. I have taken this extract from a book on animals. It is absolutely wonderful book. It is called J. R. Dural. Please write. You can google him and see this book. J. R. Dural. J. R. Dural's book on animals, animal communication, animal world. It is a wonderful five chapter book cost just about 100 rupees and I guess it is available on the net. Read some of these things. Animals also communicate, but their communications are limited in this case. Sorry, what is your name? Pardon me Anurag. I will ask such a limited member. As Anurag read to us, this communication is limited to food. They speak once before they start eating and they speak again when they finish eating. But while eating, they do not say well what wonderful food or what rubbish is this what you get in the hostel. They do not talk like that or can somebody else please read it aloud. This is an example from another kind of animal. Can somebody else please stand up and read it aloud to all of us? Please like Anurag read. Can you stand up and read? Is it legible to you? Then stand up. Take courage. Come on. Yes, great. Slowly and loud enough. Unlike a lot of other forest mice and rats, these little creatures were of a quarrelsome disposition and would argue over the food. Sitting upon their hind legs and abusing each other in thin braiding squeaks of squeaks and irons. Only one squeaks of an animal. Animals quarrel, animals fight. They bark at each other. They squeak at each other. They give certain limited calls. It seems certain other animals, you know this is the picture of a species a monkey called Durukuli monkey is found in the forests of South America. Durukuli monkeys are supposed to have some rudiments of communication. Can somebody else please read this aloud? Somebody else please. This side. Can you speak a little louder please? These monkeys have the biggest range of sounds. First they could produce a long purine bath, a very powerful vibrating cry which they use as a warning. When they deliver it, their throats would swell up the size of a small apple with a point. Then to converse with each other, they would use squeaks, grunts and hearing noises. Not unlike a cat and a series of liquid ogling sounds. Sometimes one of them in an excess of affection would drip his arm over a combiner. So they would sit side by side, arms around each other. They were the only monkeys that gave one another the most passionate human kisses. Mouth to mouth, arms around each other, tails. Thank you. You know some animals have a little more, a little more evolved. But we do not know of any animal today which has language like human beings. Language is species specific. Language is also a species. You know all human beings have it and only human beings have it. I will tell you later that language is a species uniform. All human beings have it. Like you know biological features. Like all human beings have two hands, two eyes, one nose, five fingers. Some may have six, 32 teeth, some may have 34. But they are exceptions by and large. There is no human being found yet who has more than two feet, two hands. You know particular design, a particular gift. Similarly you know all human beings have it and only human beings have it. Just as you know birds can fly and fish can swim. So human beings can speak. It is biological gift to them. Lot of people ask question today. Are human beings born talking? What is your answer? How many people believe they are born talking? Anyone? How many people think they are taught? Raise your hands. Well opinion today is changing. Opinion today is overwhelmingly in favor of the view which says that human beings start learning language even inside the mother's womb. By the time the fetus is about say 20 over 20 weeks, 20-24 weeks. By the time six months, the child has brain and the child starts picking up language and distinguishing sounds of speech from other sounds. It is not conclusive yet, but there is an overwhelming body of evidence which suggests this view. We do not know. It is open to research. Language is species uniform. Just as all birds can fly. Just as all fish can swim. Just as all reptiles can crawl. So all human beings can speak. There are some who through accidents of birth may be born deaf and dumb. But they also have language. They are not able to understand and express themselves in as complex ways as other human beings using language do. It is species uniform. Even deaf and mute have language. They write poetry. They write books. They do paintings. Do you know of any deaf and mute person who became a celebrity? Helen Keller. Please, Helen Keller. Please Google her and see what she did. Helen Keller, a girl born in somewhere North America in the United States of America was born deaf and mute. But through determined effort and will power, she learned language. She wrote books. She traveled. She met people. She also came to India. If you watched this Hindi film which was done some years ago, black. This film, a Hindi film, this was done on the life of Helen Keller. More or less. Some artistic adaptation. Otherwise, this was the life of Helen Keller. So deaf and mute also have language. They can express themselves except that their expressions are slightly different in method from the way you and I do. But like all any biological gift, all human beings have language. Now, you can say, do all of us know the same number of words? Can everyone write like Tagore or talk like Mahatma Gandhi? Can everyone write poetry? That is another matter. That is the use. Just as everyone cannot become a champion athlete. Everyone cannot become a champion wrestler. That does not mean everyone does not have the same limbs, same physiology and same anatomy. Be it a wrestler or be it a ordinary person. All of us have the same kind of physiology. So number of words that one person knows may differ from the number of words another person knows. But the basic ability in language is the same or very similar, very similar. That is why all of us can understand all other speakers of that language. Because we share a great deal, nearly all the basic that we have in common. So number of words can vary. In about 60s and 70s, there was an educational psychologist, a professor in the college of, university college of education London, who made and who did an experimental study in London and found that children living in the families of sailors, drivers, working classes, people had fewer words. And children coming from upper classes or upper middle classes had more words. He asked them questions like, what do you have for breakfast? And the children from working classes were able to describe their breakfast quite well. But in very few words, they just said good, bad. They did not have elaborate words. They did not, they could not use or today it was very delicious. Though it was not quite as well done as I would like it. They did not speak so elaborately, but they were able to express themselves. Whereas children from the upper classes had larger vocabulary, had more words to describe their breakfast, because they had greater choice, greater exposure, etcetera, etcetera. On that basis, Bessel Bernstein concluded that some children can have restricted code and some other children can have extended code. But interestingly it was found that all children, whether restricted code or extended code, had this basically all types of words. You have a structure words like in and on, you know prepositions. You have is, was, am, r, i, u. Everyone had what we call basic words. Everyone also had words frequently occurring. Everyone had the basic sentence types, simple, compound, complex, you know question sentences, order, command sentences. Everyone had those things. But some people could talk at length. Others could not talk at length. That does not mean that basic ability was lacking in anyone. So, number of words one may know can vary. Some people can know more. Some people can have, you know, in, in, in linguistics we use this term. Can you pronounce it? Repertoire. It comes from music, you know, like any, any play, any singer can give you a variety of tunes. Can sing karnotic music. Can sing hindustani. Can be classical. Can be guzzle. Can be folk. Can have various kinds of ragas. These are considered to be the repertoire. It is a French word. It comes from Latin. It means the collection, the box where you have a variety of things. So, similarly all of us have a repertoire of language. We can have a large number of words. We can have relatively limited number of words, but everybody has all the basic essential words. There is no one attested so far, known so far, who has only one pronoun, I and U, who does not have he and she. In your language, in Hindi, you know, we are yet to come across people who have only me or you, who do not know about you or me or you. The basics of language, basic word types, basic sentence types, basic sound types are there in everyone, but some people may have more. Some people may write poetry. Some people may write books. Some people may write sciences. It really does not mean that only they have language. It only means that please write. They have an extended repertoire. They have a large repertoire. Some other person in comparison may have a limited repertoire, may have only relatively few words, but given a chance, anybody can talk about anything within their experience. So, type of words do not vary. Number of words vary. Some people may have a large vocabulary. Others may have a small vocabulary, but everyone has prepositions. Everyone has pronouns. Everyone has basic words for food, clothes, security, home, house, friendship, love and affection, basic needs, so that you know, he or she can express their desires and have them fulfilled or can answer the desires of others and help them fulfill. We divide the type of words into two types, you know, into two. Some words are called what is this? Content. What is this? Everybody please, what is this? Content. Content. What is this? Content. Yeah, these are content words. So, some words are content words, like you know, bread, fruit, mango, Bible, Shakespeare, hostel, college. Some other words are structure words, like on, at, is, am, are, structure words. Basically, nouns, verbs, not auxiliary verbs, not is, are, these are content words. They carry meaning. They tell you what you want to tell, but these meaning carrying words are put together with the help of structure words. If those structure words were not there, then you know, you would not know father, son, go, father, son, beat or father, son, love. You would not know who loves whom, who beats whom. It is the structure words who tell you, father loves his son, son also loves his father. So, then you know, you put, you put them together, right? So, there are content words, there are structure words. It is true that a lot of people may have a large store of content words. Are you with me? Do you understand? A lot of people may have a large store of content words in any language, but it is not the case that anyone has lot of structure words. Some others have very few structure words. Whatever difference is there is limited to this type. Some people may have more, some others may have less. So, for the sentence types, there are various types of sentences. When on this course, we will talk about structure of sentences or syntax, we will see that some people have, you know, some people can speak more, others can speak less, but everyone has the same basic structure like everyone else. So, we say in that sense, we say language is species uniform. All human beings have the same basic language. Of course, content words and number of sentences can vary, but types of sentences do not vary. What are the types of sentences? There are four kinds of sentences as I have written on the board, simple, compound, complex and mixed. All of us have these sentences. From the point of view of meaning as well, these are the types of sentences by structure. We can have types of sentences by meaning and here also we can have different types, sentences that make statement, sentences that give commands, sentences that ask questions and sentences that express wonder, exclaim, exclamation. So, all human beings have all the basic sentence types, but the number of sentences they speak, the number of sentences they write, the way they talk can change from people to people. We can have simple sentences, complex sentences. We can have statement sentences. We can have question sentences. All members of the species, human species have language and they have the same basic stuff as anyone else. Like any other kind of biological gift they have, they have language. They all have basic minimum language and it is a species uniform. Types of sentences do not vary, but the number of sentences do vary. We can have an occasional poet. We can have an occasional writer who can do a variety of sentences, who can write lots of pages, but if you analyze the types of sentences that are used, you will find that they are the same basic types as any other person. Therefore, we conclude that languages, species, uniform, whether rich or poor, learned or illiterate, everyone has the same basic types of sentences. Actually, if you look at it a little more carefully, you will find that there are people who know a number of languages. What we know as Hindi English or other community specific languages, even those people compared with others who know only one language. There are people who know five languages. Compare them with people who know only one language, but if you look at their language, you will find that they also have the same basic types. They do not have more than anyone. They do not have else. In those five or six or four or three languages that they know, again they have acquired simple sentences, complex sentences, compound sentences. They have statement sentences, question sentences just as the person knowing only one language has. So, these are the two very basic features of language. What are the basic features of language? That number one, the basic features of language. Number one, it is uniform to mankind, all human beings have it, regardless of class, gender, country, caste, rich or poor, fat or thin, no matter what, all human beings have it. The second feature is, it is only to mankind, only to mankind. Other animals do not have language. They have communication systems, like we saw in the case of durukuli monkeys. Durukuli monkeys can hug each other, can pat each other, can talk together or like other mice or rats, they can quarrel with each other or yet another kind of animal. They can feed together, they can walk together, they can go away together, but we are yet to know of a monkey who can tell another monkey or we are yet to know of a cat who can tell another cat that the food he took yesterday was tastier or not so tasty as the food today. They can only talk about the limited context, the present, here and now. It is only human beings who can talk about lot of other things beyond here, beyond now. Most of the animals communication is restricted to there. Therefore, we do not call that kind of communication language. We call it animal communication. The language, as we know it, human is exclusive only to human beings and the other feature is that all human beings have it. As I gave you the example of Bessel Bernstein or of a poet, some people may have more words, some people may talk faster or slower, may write books, may do sciences, but they also have the same basic sentence types as human beings have. To summarize then, we have said that natural languages are distinguished from other features of other forms of communication in these two basic features. Number one, language is uniform to mankind. We cannot say ability to paint is uniform to mankind. All human beings cannot paint. All human beings cannot do a sculpture. All human beings cannot do a stitching and knitting. Other abilities are not common. No other ability is common to human beings. No other skill is common to human beings except the skill of language. Similarly, the other basic ability is it is a specific only to mankind. No other animal has this ability and all human beings are just as all birds can fly, just as all fish can swim. So, all human beings can also talk and talk about their basic needs. Of course, there are human differences. Our voices differ, our styles differ, because our experiences differ, because our genetic inheritance differ, but the basic ability that all of us can use nouns, verbs, prepositions, articles. All of us can talk about our basic needs. All of us have structure words. All of us have content words that is common to mankind. No other ability, whether computer language is pie language, whether singing or painting, whether cycling or swimming is common to all human beings. In this sense, language features are unique. Thank you. Tomorrow we will talk about other features.