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Language



             Animal communication systems are by contrast very tightly circumscribed in what may be communicated. Indeed, displaced reference, the ability to communicate about things outside immediate temporal and spatial contiguity, which is fundamental to speech, is found elsewhere only in the so-called language of bees. Bees are able, by carrying out various conventionalized movements (referred to as bee dances) in or near the hive, to indicate to others the locations and strengths of nectar sources. But nectar sources are the only known theme of this communication system. Surprisingly, however, this system, nearest to human language in function, belongs to a species remote from man in the animal kingdom and is achieved by very different physiological activities from those involved in speech. On the other hand, the animal performance superficially most like human speech, the mimicry of parrots and of some other birds that have been kept in the company of humans, is wholly derivative and serves no independent communicative function. Man's nearest relatives among the primates, though possessing a vocal physiology very similar to that of humans, have not developed anything like a spoken language.
             Language interacts with every other aspect of human life in society, and it can be understood only if it is considered in relation to society. This article attempts to survey language (both spoken and written) in this light and to consider its various functions and the purposes it can and has been made to serve. Because each language is both a working system of communication in the period and in the community wherein it is used and also the product of its past history and the source of its future development, any account of language must consider it from both these points of view.
             The science of language is known as linguistics. It includes what are generally distinguished as descriptive linguistics and historical linguistics.


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