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Time in Language, Language in Time
Author(s) -
Klein Wolfgang
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
language learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.882
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1467-9922
pISSN - 0023-8333
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2008.00457.x
Subject(s) - citation , psycholinguistics , linguistics , computer science , psychology , philosophy , library science , cognition , neuroscience
This capacity is not uniform; it is actually a set of interacting capacities, which are rooted somewhere in the brain of the individual. However, each of the three processes made possible by this set of capacities also involves social interaction with other individuals. The creation of a language, its acquisition—be it as a child or as an adult—as well as its use in communication are fundamentally social in nature. We do not know how the first language came into existence. However, it is not very likely that a particularly gifted member of our species thought it out and then passed it on to his or her family and some of his or her best friends; languages grow in steady interaction among humans. The creation of, acquisition of, and communication by means of a linguistic system are processes that have a biological as well as a social side. The tradition of linguistic research from antiquity to the end of the 20th century has always been aware of these two dimensions. What it has been much less aware of is their temporal side. What linguists normally care for is not so much the properties of the three processes but the properties of the products that they bring forth. Linguists try to uncover the characteristics of linguistic systems