Human language

Human language is a system that includes the development, acquisition, maintenance and use of complex systems of communication, and also designates the human capacity enabling these processes. A language is a specific example of such a communication system (e.g., the Igbo language).

Human language has properties of productivity and movement, and is entirely dependent on social conventions and learning. Its complex structure offers a much wider range of expression than any other known system in animal communication. It is possible that language developed when early hominins began to gradually change their primitive communication systems, develop the ability to form a theory of other minds, and share common intentionality, and that this evolution coincided with a increase in brain size.

The scientific study of language as a communication system falls within the field of linguistics. Among the major figures in linguistics are Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky. Other disciplines are interested in language and its relationship with thought, such as sociology, philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, philology. The physiological bases of language in the human brain are explored by neurolinguistics. The articulation of speech is studied by phonetics.

Linguistics allows an accurate description of language and languages. All languages ​​rely on the process of semiosis linking particular signs with meanings. Thus, spoken, gestural, and tactile languages ​​contain a phonological system that governs how symbols are used to form (meaning-carrying) sequences like words, morphemes, and a syntactic system that governs how words and morphemes are combined to form sentences and expressions.

Language acquisition begins in humans in early childhood through social interaction. The use of language is deeply rooted in human culture where, in addition to its communicative function, it serves various functions, such as identification with the group, social stratification, attachment to a social context and entertainment.