Hockett's language features

A presentation introducing Hockett's language feature in a friendlier way. Enjoy.

1. HOCKETT’S LANGUAGE FEATURES

2. WHAT ARE HOCKETT’S LANGUAGE FEATURES? A set of rules, chosen by Charles F. Hockett , that defines human communication and set it apart from animal communication. In other words, the features help us differentiate between human language and animal communication.

3. WANNA KNOW THE FEATURES? LET’S GET STARTED…

4. 1. Vocal-auditory channel The human language usually occurs vocally. The main idea of the human language is hearing/speaking.

5. 2. Broadcast transmission and directional reception When one is speaking, the sounds he produces are being transmitted to all directions. However, listeners perceive the sounds from the direction the sounds come from. We can see it with signs too. When one is signing, he signs to anyone within the line of sight, and they can all see him signing.

6. 3. Transitoriness (Rapid fading) Once we speak, the sound doesn’t exist anymore. The sound waves we create while speaking vanish quickly after we stop using speech language. How sound fades:

7. 4. Interchangeability Humans are not limited to a certain type of signal. They can send and perceive identical linguistic signals. For example: Tom and Perry are having a little talk. Tom says, “I’m a very funny man”. Perry can also say, “I’m a very funny man”.

8. 5. Total feedback A speaker can control, modify and feel what he says, as he says it. It goes for signals as well.

9. 6. Specialization Human sign each other in order to communicate, not to perform a biological task. An example: A dog pants sometimes to communicate with its owner, however dog pants in order to cool itself, so he has a biological purpose.

10. 7. Semanticity Specific signals that match specific meanings. An example: ‘ er ’ at the end of a word is usually a sign for a man with a certain proffesion , such as: painter, writer, photographer.

11. 8. Arbitrariness Mostly there is no connection between the sign and it’s meaning. In other words, the words we use don’t match the objucts they represent.

12. 9. Discreetness There are basic units of speech, which can be categorized. The words are perceived categorizingly , and not continuesly .

13. 10. Displacement   Humans can talk about things that are not currently happening, such as future, past and objects. The human speech is not limited to here and now. An example: “The singer will visit Dublin on May 2019, last time he visited was last June.”

14. 11. Productivity Through speech language a speaker is able to form a new sentence.

15. 12.Traditional transmission Although language capabilities is innate, language is learned by social settings. Children learn to speak through interacting with language speaker.

16. 13. Duality of patterning Meaningful words are combined of small meaningful units that are combined of small meaningless units.

17. 14. Prevarication   The ability to lie and deceive using speech language.

18. 15. Reflexiveness Humans can use speech language in order to talk about language. Example: The whole field of researching Linguistics is reflexive.

19. 16. Learnability Language is both teachable, and learnable. It can be taught, and it could be learned.