LANGUAGE

英文简介：Language is a system that consists of the development, acquisition, maintenance and use of complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so; and a language is any specific example of such a system.The scientific study of language is called linguistics. Questions concerning the philosophy of language, such as whether words can represent experience, have been debated at least since Gorgias and Plato in ancient Greece. Thinkers such as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while others like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought. 20th-century philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language. Major figures in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky.Estimates of the number of human languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. However, any precise estimate depends on a partly arbitrary distinction between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken or signed, but any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, in whistling, signed, or braille. This is because human language is modality-independent. 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.Human language has the properties of productivity and displacement, and relies entirely on social convention and learning. Its complex structure affords a much wider range of expressions than any known system of animal communication. Language is thought to have originated when early hominins started gradually changing their primate communication systems, acquiring the ability to form a theory of other minds and a shared intentionality.[1][2] 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. The use of language is deeply entrenched in human culture. Therefore, in addition to its strictly communicative uses, language also has many social and cultural uses, such as signifying group identity, social stratification, as well as 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. The Indo-European family is the most widely spoken and includes languages as diverse as English, Russian and Hindi; the Sino-Tibetan family includes Mandarin, Bodo and the other Chinese languages, and Tibetan; the Afro-Asiatic family includes Arabic, Somali, and Hebrew; the Bantu languages include Swahili, and Zulu, and hundreds of other languages spoken throughout Africa; and the Malayo-Polynesian languages include Indonesian, Malay, Tagalog, and hundreds of other languages spoken throughout the Pacific. The languages of the Dravidian family, spoken mostly in Southern India, include Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. 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.中文简介：（来自Google、百度翻译）语言是一个由开发、获取、维护和使用复杂的通信系统，特别是人类的能力组成的系统；语言是这种系统的任何具体例子。对语言的科学研究称为语言学。关于语言哲学的问题，如词汇是否能代表经验，至少从古希腊的高尔吉亚和柏拉图开始就有过争论。卢梭等思想家认为语言源于情感，康德等思想家则认为语言源于理性和逻辑思维。像维特根斯坦这样的20世纪哲学家认为哲学实际上是语言的研究。语言学的主要人物包括费迪南德·德索绪尔和诺姆·乔姆斯基。世界上人类语言的估计数在5000到7000种之间。然而，任何精确的估计都取决于语言和方言之间的某种程度上的任意区分。自然语言是口语或手语，但任何语言都可以通过听觉、视觉或触觉刺激（例如口哨、手语或盲文）编码到第二媒体。这是因为人类语言是独立于情态的。根据有关语言和意义定义的哲学观点，当用作一般概念时，“语言”可指学习和使用复杂交流系统的认知能力，或描述构成这些系统的规则集，或从这些规则产生的话语集。所有语言都依赖半衰期的过程来将符号与特定的意义联系起来。口头语言、手工语言和触觉语言包含一个语音系统，该系统控制如何使用符号来形成被称为单词或词素的序列，以及一个句法系统，该系统控制如何将单词和词素组合成短语和话语。人类语言具有生产力和迁移性，完全依赖于社会习俗和学习。它的复杂结构提供了比任何已知的动物交流系统更广泛的表达范围。语言被认为是起源于早期人类开始逐渐改变他们的灵长类交流系统，获得了形成其他思想理论和共同意向性的能力[1][2]这种发展有时被认为与大脑容量的增加相一致，许多语言学家看到了语言的结构。通用电气已经发展成为具有特定的沟通和社会功能的公司。语言在人脑中的许多不同位置被处理，特别是在布罗卡区和韦尼克区。人类在幼儿时期通过社会交往获得语言，儿童一般在三岁左右就能流利地说话。语言的使用在人类文化中根深蒂固。因此，语言除了有严格的交际用途外，还具有许多社会和文化用途，如表示群体认同、社会分层以及社会修饰和娱乐。随着时间的推移，语言不断进化和多样化，通过比较现代语言，可以重建它们的进化历史，以确定它们的祖先语言必须具有哪些特征，以便以后的发展阶段得以发生。一组从同一祖先传下来的语言被称为语言家族。印欧语系是最广泛的语言，包括英语、俄语和印地语等多种语言；汉藏语系包括普通话、博多语和其他汉语，以及藏语；亚非语系包括阿拉伯语、索马里语和希伯来语；班图语系包括斯瓦希里语和祖鲁语，以及数百种其他语言。在整个非洲使用；马来-波利尼西亚语包括印度尼西亚语、马来语、塔加洛语和太平洋地区使用的数百种其他语言。德拉威家族的语言主要在印度南部使用，包括泰米尔语、泰卢固语和卡纳达语。学术共识认为，到2100年，21世纪初使用的语言中，50%到90%可能已经灭绝。

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