Characteristics of a Language:
Some of the important characteristics of language are given below:
1. Language is a Vital Part of the Growth Process: It is a social act, a means of adjustment to control over other people. Language exists in a society, it is a means of nourishing and developing culture and establishing human relations.
2. Language is Symbolic: Language consists of various symbols that are employed to denote some objects, occurrences, or meaning.
3. Language is Systematic: Although language is symbolic, yet its symbols are arranged in a particular system. All languages have phonological and grammatical systems and within a system, there are several sub-systems.
4. Language is Arbitrary: There is no inherent relationship between the words of a language and their meaning or the ideas conveyed by them. There is no reason why a female adult human being is called a woman in English, aurat in Urdu, zen in Persian, and femine in French. The choice of word is arbitrary but once a word is selected for a particular reference, it comes to stay as such.
5. Language is an Outcome of Evolution and Convention: No language was created in a day out of a mutually agreed-upon formula by a group of humans. Each generation transmits this convention on to the next. Like all human institutions languages also change and die, grow, and expand.
6. Language is Productive and Creative: The structural elements of human language can be combined to produce new utterances, never heard before according to the needs of society.