DEFINING

CRITERION OF
LANGUAGE
Second group :
1.Elya Eka Septiani 113411019
2.Irma Nur Khasanah 113411021
3.Laila Fathiyyah 113411022
4,Nita Kurniati 113411009
5.Nurul Hidayah
113411035
6.Maria Ulfah
113411005

Language as human
criterion
Man is a social being, who always needs company in
his life. It can hardly be imagined that he should live
all alone by himself without anyone to acompany him.
In order to facilitate their efforts to provide
themselves with the necessities of life, human beings
have to cooperate with one another, which can only
be carried out in a community.
It is for the purpose of this cooperation that members
of a social group needs a means of communication,
which is called language. With language man can
express his ideas and wishes to other people such as
when he needs their help.

The three elements mentioned

above, namely human beings,
community, and language
very closely related and not
easily divisible.
Thus, language is considered
as a criterion which is used to
identified human beings.

The question arises whether the

means of communication used
by animals can also be called a
language as used by human
being?

Both of human beings and animals

produce the sounds to convey a
message.
The differents :
1. the message imparted by animals
is limited to their biological needs.
2. human communicate not only
about things connected with his
biological needs, but also about any
other thing which he may deem
necessary.

Characteristics of Human
Language
The defining characteristics of human
language can be easily deduced from the
following definition made by an American
linguist, John B. Carrol, in his book entitled
The Study of Language (1953) :
Language is an arbitrary system of speech
sounds or sequences of speech sounds which
is used or can be used in interpersonal
communication by an aggregation of human
being, and which rather exhaustively
catalogs things, processes, and events in the
human environment.

From the definition of

language quoted above one
can draw some basic
characteristics of human
language, among others that
language is systematic,
arbitrary, spoken, social
and complete.

1) It is systematic ; this
means that it implies orderly
arrangement of the signaling
units used by language and
organized according to
patterns.
2) Language is said to be
arbitrary which means that
it is based on social
agreement

3)Language is always spoken. This

means that people always have a way of
communicating ideas by manipulating
sounds that are produced by their vocal
organs.
4)Language is said to be social, because
it is only used in social group which
involves at least two persons, the speaker
and the hearer. Language is a special
characteristics of human or it can also be
regarded as a human criterion because
only human being speak a language.

5) Language is said to be
complete, not like animals
means of communication. The
use of human language is
not limited to biological
needs. It is more complete in
that it can always be used to
communicate about the culture
of its native speakers.

Thank you !