Assuming for the moment that language refers to spoken language (and we do know that sign languages are fully developed languages), then the basic structural component of language is sound. As anyone who has attempted to learn a foreign language as an adult and labored with the arduous task of wrapping tongue, lips, and vocal chords around the strange sounds of this language has discovered, different languages use different sounds. The task of describing the sounds of a language or group of languages is a part of the discipline of descriptive linguistics.
Describing a language involves describing the structure of the language. This structure is hierarchical, which begins with the smallest meaningful unit of language, the phoneme (a single distinguishable sound), and ends with connected sentences known as discourse. Some linguists describe the hierarchy of language this way:
Phonetics and Phonology: the sound patterns of language.
Morphology: the process of forming sounds into words.
Syntax: the process of forming words into phrases, phrases into clauses, and clauses into sentences.
Semantics: the many nuances of meaning expressed in sentences.
Discourse: the process of connecting sentences into longer and more complex forms of meaning.
Until fairly recently, linguists have focused their studies on spoken language. Thus, the starting point for describing a language has been the sounds and sound patterns which are found in the language. As linguists have included sign languages in their studies, they have found that gestures and patterns of gestures form the basic structure of the language.
Spoken language is a collection of sounds which are put together in a culturally appropriate manner to form meaningful communication. The process of producing, transmitting, and receiving these sounds is called phonetics. Phonetics involves the study of how sounds are articulated by the human speech mechanism as well as how sounds are received by the auditory mechanism. This includes how sounds are formulated in the brain and interpreted in the brain.
The inventory of sounds for any given language is called phonology. In an entry in Encyclopedia of Languages & Linguistics, R. Wiese, of Philipps University in Marbug, Germany, writes:
“Phonology is that part of language which comprises the systematic and functional properties of sound in language.”
Wiese also writes:
“Phonology seeks to discover those systematic properties in the domain of sound structure, and find the regularities and principles behind it both for individual languages and for language in general.”
It is easy for non-linguists to confuse the concepts of phonetics and phonology. In a very simple fashion, we can say that phonetics deals with human anatomy: the larynx, the mouth, the tongue, the ear. On the other hand, phonology is about symbolism and meaning. R. Wiese puts it this way:
“But while phonetics is interested in the concrete, continuously varying features of articulation, sound transmission (acoustics), and auditory perception, the subject of phonology is thought to be a set of discrete, symbolic categories which belong to the cognitive, and not the physical, domain.”
In their textbook
An Introduction to Linguistics: Language, Grammar and Semantics, Pushpinder Syal and D. V. Jindal explain the difference this way:
“Thus phonetics studies language at the level of sounds: How sounds are articulated by the human speech mechanism and received by the auditory mechanism, how sounds can be distinguished and characterised by the manner in which they are produced. Phonology studies the combination of sounds into organised units of speech, the formation of syllables and larger units.”
The number of kinds of sounds used in language will vary greatly from language to language. Anthropologist Dirk Van Der Elst, in his book
Culture as Given, Culture as Choice, writes:
“The range of vocalizations human beings use in communications is astonishing. Speakers of every language employ vowels and consonants that speakers of some other language find impossible to imitate without considerable practice—if ever.”
Language is more than just a collection of random sounds: it is about the ability to communicate meaning. A phoneme is a sound that has meaning for the language. In English, for example,
b and
p are phonemes as they are involved in determining the meaning of words:
pit and
bit;
pitch and
bitch. While there are a finite number of phonemes in language (as few as 11 and as many as 150), these sounds can be combined in an infinite number of ways to produce meaningful communication. This provides language with a great deal of flexibility to express facts, fantasy, and emotion in highly nuanced ways.
The number of phonemes in languages can range from more than a hundred in the Khoisan languages of Africa to only eleven in Hawaiian. There are only about 30 Khoisan (also spelled Khoesan) languages still spoken today. In an entry in Encyclopedia of Languages & Linguistics, W. H. Haacke writes:
“The most conspicuous phonological characteristic of Khoesan languages is the use of click consonants.”
With regard to !Kung (the “!” indicates a click sound), a Khoisan language, George Campbell, in his book
Compendium of the World’s Languages, reports:
“About a hundred consonantal phonemes are distinguished, evenly divided between egressive (non-click) and ingressive (click) inventories. This large number of phonemes (the world record, as far as known) is achieved in both inventories by means of extensive secondary articulation.”
Hawaiian (also spelled Hawai’ian) is generally used as an example of a language with relatively few phonemes. George Campbell reports:
“Hawai’ian exhibits an extreme case of phonological reductionism, with only eight consonants surviving from the Proto-Polynesian inventory. Together with five vowels, these eight consonants can form 45 of the monosyllabic particles which play a crucial role in Polynesian syntax.”
It should be noted that there is an arbitrary connection between word form and meaning. The meaning is not inherent in the form or sound. A word is simply a culturally defined symbol. Thus, the English word “book” and the Spanish word “libro” are simply symbols for the things on the library shelf and the physical object has not determined the sounds of the word.