Universal properties of language From An Introduction to Language and Linguistics (Fasold & Connor-Linton (editors), 2006, Yule, 2003)

Modularity Most linguists believe that language is a modular system. That is, people produce and interpret language using a set of component subsystems (or modules) in a coordinated way. Each module is responsible for a part of the total job; it takes the output of other modules as its input and distributes its own output to those of other modules.

Modularity (continued) For example, Phonetics is about production and interpretation of speech sounds. Phonology studies the organization of raw Phonetics in language in general and in individual languages in particular. In other larger linguistic units such as Semantics, a new module as discourse which is the organization of language above and beyond sentence has been added as a subsystem.

Constituency and recursion All languages are organized into constituents, allowing more complex units to enter structures where simpler ones are also possible. So we can say in English, “She sat down,” “The smart woman sat down.” She can be replaced by The smart woman because they are constituents of a sentence.

Constituents and recursion (continued) Being composed of constituents also allows languages to be recursive. Recursion is the property of language which allows grammatical processes to be applied repeatedly, combining constituents to produce an infinite variety of sentences of indefinite length. For example, we can expand the short sentence like He was tall into longer sentences like He was tall and strong and handsome.

Discreteness Another property of all languages is discreteness. Each sound in a language is treated as discrete. It is possible to produce a range of sounds or forms into individual, bounded units. For example, different languages divide the continuous “space” of possible speech sounds into different inventories of phonemes.

Productivity In all human languages, an infinite number of new meanings can be constructed by combining existing forms according to the rules of a given language. For example, new words can be coined by creating novel combination of existing morphemes, like teflon is originally formed by the combination of te(tra)-fl(our)-on.

Arbitrariness The form of human language has no intrinsic relationship between the form of a word (how it sounds) and its meaning. It is generally the case that there is no “natural” connection between a linguistic form and its meaning. A property of linguistic signs is, therefore, their arbitrary relationship with the objects they are used to indicate.

Reliance on context Language is organized into two layers simultaneously. This property is called duality, or “double articulation”. A single sequence of sounds can have more than one meaning. Therefore, at one level, we have distinct sounds, and, at another level, we have distinct meaning. For example, when we say “bin” we have another level producing a meaning which is different from the meaning of saying “nib”.

Variability The language that people use varies depending on who’s speaking and the situation in which they’re speaking. Variability in language allows people to communicate far more than the semantic content of the words and sentences they utter. It is indexical that it signals the social identities(geographical, social status, ethnicity, and even gender) and the immediate speech situation.