What is language?

Language is the primary method of human communication, but there are also other ways to
communicate without the use of language. When asked to define language we tend to think of a verbal
and written system in which certain sounds and symbols come together in a specific way to convey
meaning. Language in its most complex form is unique to humans, although some animals have been
found to have basic communication patterns. Languages often have verbal and written components, but
how we classify something like American Sign Language? Animals manage to communicate — do they
have language? How did language evolve? How do we learn enough language ourselves to begin to
answer this question?

Why is it so surprising that we can learn language?

If you’ve ever tried to learn a new language, you know it’s not easy. There are new rules of grammar
which come with many exceptions, new sounds that are hard to make, endless lists of vocabulary to
commit to memory and so on. And yet, you managed to learn the basics of your very first language
around the time you were two years old; no textbooks in sight.

Not only are children able to absorb the complicated rules of grammar without formal teaching, they do
so from a limited vocabulary. Regardless of how much a child is spoken to, they will not hear every
possible word and sentence by the time they begin speaking. Yet when they do start to talk, children
begin to follow grammatical rules and apply them to form new, innovative phrases. This level of
information processing is incredibly impressive in anyone, much less someone still figuring out counting
and skipping!

What do we know?

As is often the case in psychology and sociology, it’s hard to get what we normally think of as data about
language acquisition. It’s not a chemical we can test for or a distance we can measure (imagine asking a
2 year old how many words they know — not a particularly useful or productive task, right? ). However,
there are some facts that are generally agreed upon by the scientific community. The first couple years of
life are the critical period for language learning, which becomes a much harder task as people age.
Children usually say their first words around 10-18 months of age, and graduate to phrases sometime
before they are two years old. In fact, studies have shown that 18 month olds can tell the difference
between correctly formed verb pairs (is jumping) and incorrect ones (will jumping). Somewhere between
four and seven years old children begin to be able to tell stories that more or less make sense.