Human language has two key properties: duality and cultural transmission. Duality means language operates on the levels of individual sounds and combinations of sounds that create meaning. Cultural transmission means language is acquired through socialization rather than genetics. Additional properties include arbitrariness, where sounds are arbitrarily connected to meaning, reflexiveness to discuss language, interchangeability of roles in communication, specialization solely for linguistic purposes, displacement to discuss non-present concepts, productivity to create new meanings, and discreteness of distinct sound units that combine to form different meanings. Animals generally lack these properties and rely on innate sounds directly connected to messages.

1. Properties of
human language

2. Duality And Cultural transmission
 Duality means that human language is organized at two levels
simultaneously.
 One level: the level of individual sounds. E.g.- l,b,t,p,i,n,etc.
 Second level: the level of meanings. E.g.- nib, pit, lip, etc.
 Most economical feature because with a limited number of
sounds, we can produce unlimited number of meaningful
combinations.
 Animals only produce sounds on one level i.e. they cannot
produce meaningful combinations.
 Cultural transmission means that language is acquired culturally
rather than genetically.
 Humans acquire language as children in the culture they are
bred, irrespective of their ethnicity.
 On the other hand, animals are born with a certain pre-acquired
sounds that they make.

3. Arbitrariness And Reflexiveness
 Arbitrariness means that there is no predefined connection between
a linguistic form and its meaning. It is arbitrary.
 However, some words are onomatopoeic meaning that they have
sounds similar to the idea they represent. E.g., crash, buzz, hiss,
thud, tick-tock, ding-dong, etc.
 In majority of animals, the signals are connected to the message they
convey. For instance, they have specific combinations for
establishing territories and different combinations for mating.
 Reflexiveness means that humans can use language to talk about or
discuss language.
 We can analyse the uses of language with the help of language.
 Animals cannot use this feature as they cannot discuss about their
language.

4. Interchangeability And Specialization
 Interchangeability means that humans can be the
receiver as well as the sender of linguistic messages.
That is, the sender can be the receiver and vise-versa.
 Moreover, humans are not limited or prohibited to send
or receive only set linguistic signals.
 Specialization means that linguistic signals are meant
only for the linguistic purpose and not for any other
biological function.
 However, some animals may use non-specialized
communication.

5. Displacement And productivity
 Displacement means that humans can use language to
talk about the present as well as the past and future. We
can also talk about the things which are not in our
immediate vicinity.
 Animals can only send linguistic signals in the here and
now.
 Productivity means that language is open-ended.
Humans can always use language to create new linguistic
signals to describe new objects. It means that there is no
limit as to the number of linguistic utterances in a human
language.
 Animals have only set sound patterns.

6. Discreteness
 It means that linguistic expressions are composed
of sets of distinct sounds.
 These sounds on their own can convey a different
meaning and together they may convey yet
another meaning.
 If we repeat the sounds, then we get another
particular meaning.
 E.g., phonemes in human language. ‘n’, ‘a’, ‘p’ are
discrete sounds and they can combine differently
to produce different meanings. ‘pan’ or ‘nap’.

7. Thankyou