Historically, the formation of language took place in various forms, different languages ​​created various groups, and the cultural features of the various structural components of the language have been preserved to this day.

All languages ​​are usually divided into 2 large groups: natural and artificial languages.

Natural languages ​​arose in the conditions of human development in various natural-geographical and socio-historical conditions. Being one of the main ethnic characteristics (common territory of residence, language, culture, mentality), natural language became a means of integration of people in the first stages of the formation of human society. With the increasing complexity of social life and the settlement of people across vast areas of the globe, linguistic differences arose, which led to the formation of many national languages. Currently, there are about 5,000 languages ​​on the globe, spoken by residents of just over 200 countries.

Historical features of the formation of natural languages ​​have led to the fact that the same language
People living in different countries and even on different continents, for example, the British, Americans and Australians, consider them native. Russian is the native language for many people born during the Soviet Union in national republics. Their number includes Belarusians, Ukrainians, and representatives of various ethnic groups of vast Russia, etc.
Natural languages ​​have different forms. The main ones are:

1 dialects, including social dialects,
2 professional speech,
3 vernacular,
4 literary language.

Dialect is a language consisting of local names of objects and phenomena of everyday life, verbal designations of everyday actions, the simplest concepts known to every person from birth. Different ethnic groups, and even people belonging to the same ethnic and national entity, can speak different dialects. In addition to differences in conceptual structure, dialects are often built on different phonetic bases (the same letters and syllables are pronounced differently). Each locality may have its own dialect.

Dialects are not part of the literary national language, since they are not used everywhere, but only in a certain territory. Under the influence of changing living conditions and the spread of linguistic literacy cultivated by the media, dialect words are gradually falling out of use. Some are replaced by the words of the literary language, others are forgotten as the phenomena and objects denoted by them disappear from everyday life.

Social dialects is the language of various social groups, which, for various reasons, in certain socio-historical conditions, can act as the creators and bearers of a separate subculture. This subculture can take shape in various linguistic forms. The main difference between social dialects and other forms of language is either the use of special words to denote phenomena known only to this social group, for example, the language of criminals, thieves “Fenya”; or in changing the meaning of ordinary words, for example, “laces” - parents in youth slang; in the use of ordinary words in a modified context, for example, in the language of the aristocracy “dinner party, dinner”, etc. are interpreted not as an invitation to a meal, but with the word “specific” (person, man, guy), new Russians (like new Belarusians) call a person who corresponds to their image of a business and successful person.

A type of social dialect is professional language. Its main difference from natural language is that it is the language of a separate socio-professional group, the specialized activities of which are associated with the need to use special terms to designate specific phenomena and objects included in this professional activity.

Depending on the linguistic conditions in which a specific professional activity began to take shape, terminology may develop, which in this case is borrowed in nature. Thus, in the Russian language of sociologists, geneticists, cyberneticists and generally those associated with computer science, there are a lot of foreign language terms, mostly in English, because in the former Soviet Union these sciences were banned for a long time. And classical medicine traditionally operates with terminology in Latin, an already dead language.

Professional language is the means of existence of professional culture. And if it is sometimes deliberately complicated in order to distance professionals from the “uninitiated,” then this may be evidence of a not very high level of professional culture. In the modern “knowledge society”, development is carried out not only by increasing the educational, “knowledge” level of all members of civil society, but also by bringing the scientific professional knowledge base closer to every active member of society, which is also achieved through the openness of professional knowledge in their linguistic design.

Vernacular- this is a special form of natural language, which is characteristic of people who do not know the norms of the literary language. Vernacular speech differs from both the literary language and the dialect. It has a number of typical features in the field of vocabulary, morphology, phonetics, and syntax. For example: words such as “always”, “from there”, “opposite”, “theirs”, etc. are forms of vernacular. Their use in everyday speech is sometimes ironic, sometimes used in literature to express the sociocultural characteristics of a character, sometimes they are used by politicians to get closer to their electorate, who speak the vernacular. However, in general, vernacular is the language of people who are not entirely familiar with the standard language, for various reasons. Nowadays, vernacular language is actively being replaced by literary language. However, some of its features are very tenacious.

Unlike dialects, which are characterized by territorial fixation, vernacular speech is extraterritorial. It does not have its own strictly defined norms, which is why it differs from both the literary language and dialects.

Literary language- the language of official business documents, teaching, science, journalism, fiction, all manifestations of culture expressed in verbal form. The study of a literary language is closely related to the study of literature, the history of language, and the cultural history of the people. It is one of the most effective tools of enlightenment, touching upon the objectives of education.

The main feature of the national literary language is its normativity. Language norm - This is a central concept in defining the national literary language in both its written and spoken form, it means the way it is customary to speak and write in a given society in a given era. Linguistic norms are formed objectively in the process of centuries-old language practice of cultural people. Norms are historically fluid, but they change slowly. If there were no norms, the literary language could not exist. Literary speech would be mixed with streams of dialect speech and vernacular, losing its normative functions.

Constructed languages ​​- These are special formalized languages, constructed according to a specific plan for specific purposes, for example, shorthand, Morse code, computer languages.

World (international) languages- the most common languages ​​used by representatives of different nations outside the territories inhabited by people for whom they are originally native. These are the languages ​​accepted as working languages ​​of the UN and other international organizations. Today these include: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese. The leading place belongs to English, the native language of 350 million people, which is studied in almost all countries of the world.

There are auxiliary international languages, for example Esperanto, an artificial language created in 1887 to simplify communication between people speaking different languages. Esperanto received its name from the pseudonym of its creator: Esperanto means “hoping.”

By origin, languages ​​are either natural or artificial.

Natural languages - These are sound (speech) and then graphic (writing) information sign systems that have historically developed in society. They arose to consolidate and transfer accumulated information in the process of communication between people. Natural languages ​​act as carriers of the centuries-old culture of mankind and are distinguished by rich expressive capabilities and universal coverage of the most diverse areas of life.

Natural languages ​​cannot always be used in the process of scientific knowledge due to such features as:

• 1) polysemy– many words and linguistic expressions of natural language, depending on the context, take on different meanings, which is associated with homonymy, for example the words “world”, “braid”, “sleeve”, etc.;
• 2) non-compositionality, those. the absence in natural language of rules with the help of which, out of context, it would be possible to determine the exact meaning of a complex expression, although the meanings of all the words included in it are known. For example, the phrase “He sat on a horse with a broken leg for a long time” can be interpreted in two ways: a) the rider’s leg was broken; b) the horse’s leg was broken;
• 3) self-applicability, those. when expressions can speak for themselves. For example, "I'm lying."

Artificial (scientific) languages are created specifically to solve certain problems of cognition. They appeared as formalized languages ​​of science - mathematics, physics, chemistry, programming. Artificial languages ​​are auxiliary sign systems created on the basis of natural languages ​​for the accurate and economical transmission of scientific and other information. They are constructed using natural language or a previously constructed artificial language.

Scientific languages ​​are subject to normative principles: unambiguity, objectivity and interchangeability.

According to the principle unambiguity the expression used as a name must be the name of only one object, if it is a single name, and if it is a general name, then the given expression must be a name common to all objects of the same class. In natural language, this principle is not always observed, but it must be adhered to when constructing artificial languages, for example, the language of predicate logic.

The principle of unambiguity excludes homonymy, i.e. designation of different objects in one word, which is often found in natural languages ​​(for example, the word “spit” can mean a type of hairstyle, an agricultural tool, or a sandbank).

According to the principle objectivity statements must assert or deny something about the meanings of the names included in the sentences, and not about the names themselves. It should, of course, be borne in mind that the meanings of some names are the names themselves. Such cases do not contradict the principle of objectivity. For example, in the sentence “Matter is primary, and consciousness is secondary,” the word “matter” is the name of objective reality, and in the sentence ““Matter” is a philosophical category,” the word “matter,” taken in quotation marks, is the name of the name, the name of the category . Such names are called in quotation marks names. Sometimes in natural language there are cases where the name of a name is the original name itself. For example, in the sentence “The word “table” consists of four letters,” the word “table” is the name of the word itself. This use of names, when words designate themselves, is called autonomous. Autonomous use of expressions is unacceptable in scientific languages, since it leads to misunderstandings.

Italics or quotation marks are used to indicate the autonomous use of expressions. Mixing ordinary and autonomous use of expressions leads to logical errors in reasoning. An example of such an error is the following reasoning: “The dog is gnawing on a bone. “Dog” is a noun. Therefore, the noun is gnawing on a bone.”

Principle interchangeability: If in a complex name the part that is itself a name is replaced by another name with the same meaning, then the value obtained as a result of such replacement of the complex name must be the same as the meaning of the original complex name. For example, in the sentence “Aristotle taught philosophy to Alexander the Great,” the word “Aristotle” can be replaced with the words “creator of syllogistics.”

Extensional is called a context relative to those signs, the equivalent replacement of which does not lead to a change in the meaning of the context. The use of these signs is called extensional.

To preserve the principle of interchangeability and avoid antinomies, two ways of using names should be distinguished. The first is that the name simply identifies the item(s). The second is that objects denoted by a name are considered in a certain aspect.

For example: if two expressions have the same meaning, then one of them can be replaced by the other, and the sentence in which the replacement is made retains its true meaning. Thus, two expressions – “Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov” and “author of the story “Taman”” – denote the same person, therefore in the sentence “Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov was born in 1814” – the first expression (“Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov”) can be replaced the second (“the author of the story “Taman””), without any prejudice to the truth of the entire statement: “The author of the story “Taman” was born in 1814.”

Thus, the principle of interchangeability serves to distinguish between extensional and intensional contexts.

A context (complex sign) in which the principle of interchangeability of at least one of the signs included in it is violated is called intensional with respect to this sign, i.e. depending on the intension (meaning) of a given sign.

A context (complex sign), in which equivalent replacement of signs does not lead to a change in the meaning of the context, is called extensional, depending only on the extension (meaning) of the sign.

For extensional contexts, only the objective meaning of expressions (their “volume”) is important, therefore expressions with the same meaning are identified. In intensional contexts, the meaning of an expression is also taken into account, so replacing expressions with the same meaning can make a true sentence false if these expressions have different meanings. If in the true sentence “The student did not know that Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov is the author of the story “Taman”” the expression “author of the story “Taman”” is replaced by the expression “Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov”, which has the same meaning, then the result will be an obviously false sentence : “The student did not know that Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov was Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov.”

For example, in the expression “Paris is the capital of France,” the names “Paris” and “capital of France” are used extensionally, since only the identity of their meanings is asserted and no replacement of any name with an equivalent one will lead to a change in the meaning of the context. In the sentence “Paris is the capital of France, due to which the government of France is located in it,” the name “Paris” is used intensionally, since it is the property of this city to be the capital of France that provides justification for the fact that the government is located in it. If we replace the name “the capital of France” with its equivalent “the city in which the Eiffel Tower is located,” then the true statement will be converted into a false one, since the presence of the Eiffel Tower in Paris is not the reason that the French government is located there, i.e. e. Regarding the name "Paris", the context is extensional, since it simply means a certain city with all its characteristics, and any replacement of this name with equivalent ones will not lead to a change in the meaning of the statement.

Thus, with respect to one sign the context can be intensional, and with respect to another - extensional. The characterization of a context as intensional or extensional is always given in relation to a specific sign.

Natural language- in linguistics and philosophy of language, a language used for human communication (as opposed to formal languages ​​and other types of sign systems, also called languages ​​in semiotics) and not artificially created (as opposed to artificial languages).

The vocabulary and grammatical rules of natural language are determined by the practice of use and are not always formally recorded.

Natural language features

Natural language as a system of signs

Currently, consistency is considered the most important characteristic of a language. The semiotic essence of natural language consists in establishing a correspondence between the universe of meanings and the universe of sounds.

Based on the nature of the plane of expression In its oral form, human language belongs to the auditory sign systems, and in its written form – to the visual.

By type of genesis natural language is classified as a cultural system, thus it is contrasted with both natural and artificial sign systems. Human language as a sign system is characterized by a combination of features of both natural and artificial sign systems.

Natural language system refers to multi-level systems, because consists of qualitatively different elements - phonemes, morphemes, words, sentences, the relationships between which are complex and multifaceted.

Regarding the structural complexity of natural language, language is called the most complex of sign systems.

By structural basis also distinguish deterministic And probabilistic semiotic systems. Natural language belongs to probabilistic systems in which the order of elements is not rigid, but is probabilistic in nature.

Semiotic systems are also divided into dynamic, moving and static, stationary. Elements of dynamic systems change their position relative to each other, while the state of elements in static systems is motionless and stable. Natural language is classified as a dynamic system, although it also contains static features.

Another structural characteristic of sign systems is their completeness. A complete system can be defined as a system with signs representing all theoretically possible combinations of a certain length from the elements of a given set. Accordingly, an incomplete system can be characterized as a system with a certain degree of redundancy, in which not all possible combinations of given elements are used to express signs. Natural language is an incomplete system with a high degree of redundancy.

The differences between sign systems in their ability to change make it possible to classify them into open and closed systems. Open systems in the process of their functioning can include new signs and are characterized by higher adaptability compared to closed systems that are not capable of change. The ability to change is inherent in human language.

According to V.V. Nalimov, natural language occupies a middle position between “soft” and “hard” systems. Soft systems include ambiguously coding and ambiguously interpreted sign systems, for example, the language of music, while hard systems include the language of scientific symbols.

Main function of language - constructing judgments, the possibility of determining the meaning of active reactions, organizing concepts that represent some symmetrical forms that organize the space of relations of “communicators”: [source not specified 1041 days]

communicative:

stating(for a neutral statement of fact),

interrogative(for a fact request),

appellative(to encourage action),

expressive(to express the mood and emotions of the speaker),

contact-making(to create and maintain contact between interlocutors);

metalinguistic(for interpretation of linguistic facts);

aesthetic(for aesthetic impact);

function of indicator of belonging to a certain group of people(nation, nationality, profession);

informational;

educational;

emotional.

Constructed languages- special languages, which, unlike natural ones, are designed purposefully. There are already more than a thousand such languages, and more and more are constantly being created.

Classification

The following types of artificial languages ​​are distinguished:

Programming languages ​​and computer languages- languages ​​for automatic processing of information using a computer.

Information languages- languages ​​used in various information processing systems.

Formalized languages ​​of science- languages ​​intended for symbolic recording of scientific facts and theories of mathematics, logic, chemistry and other sciences.

Languages ​​of non-existent peoples created for fictional or entertainment purposes, for example: the Elvish language invented by J. Tolkien, the Klingon language invented by Marc Okrand for the science fiction series Star Trek (see Fictional languages), the Na'vi language created for the film Avatar.

International auxiliary languages- languages ​​created from elements of natural languages ​​and offered as an auxiliary means of interethnic communication.

The idea of ​​​​creating a new language of international communication arose in the 17th-18th centuries as a result of the gradual decrease in the international role of Latin. Initially, these were predominantly projects of a rational language, freed from the logical errors of living languages ​​and based on the logical classification of concepts. Later, projects based on models and materials from living languages ​​appear. The first such project was the universalglot, published in 1868 in Paris by Jean Pirro. Pirro's project, which anticipated many details of later projects, went unnoticed by the public.

The next international language project was Volapük, created in 1880 by the German linguist I. Schleyer. It caused quite a stir in society.

The most famous artificial language was Esperanto (L. Zamenhof, 1887) - the only artificial language that became widespread and united quite a lot of supporters of an international language.

The most famous artificial languages ​​are:

basic english

Esperanto

interlingua

Latin-blue-flexione

occidental

solresol

Klingon language

Elvish languages

There are also languages ​​that were specifically developed to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence. For example - Linkos.

By purpose of creation artificial languages ​​can be divided into the following groups:

Philosophical and logical languages- languages ​​that have a clear logical structure of word formation and syntax: Lojban, Tokipona, Ifkuil, Ilaksh.

Supporting languages- intended for practical communication: Esperanto, Interlingua, Slovio, Slovyanski.

Artistic or aesthetic languages- created for creative and aesthetic pleasure: Quenya.

Language is also created to set up an experiment, for example, to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that the language a person speaks limits consciousness, drives it into a certain framework).

By its structure Artificial language projects can be divided into the following groups:

A priori languages- based on logical or empirical classifications of concepts: loglan, lojban, rho, solresol, ifkuil, ilaksh.

A posteriori languages- languages ​​built primarily on the basis of international vocabulary: Interlingua, Occidental

Mixed languages- words and word formation are partly borrowed from non-artificial languages, partly created on the basis of artificially invented words and word-formation elements: Volapuk, Ido, Esperanto, Neo.

The number of speakers of artificial languages ​​can only be estimated approximately, due to the fact that there is no systematic record of speakers.

According to the degree of practical use artificial languages ​​are divided into projects that have become widespread: Ido, Interlingua, Esperanto. Such languages, like national languages, are called “socialized”; among artificial ones they are combined under the term planned languages. An intermediate position is occupied by artificial language projects that have a certain number of supporters, for example, Loglan (and its descendant Lojban), Slovio and others. Most artificial languages ​​have a single speaker - the author of the language (for this reason it is more correct to call them “linguistic projects” rather than languages).

Hierarchy of communication goals

Language functions

Basic functions:

Cognitive(cognitive) function consists in the accumulation of knowledge, its ordering, systematization.

Communicative the function is to ensure interaction between the sender of a verbal message and its recipient.

Private language features

Contact making (phatic)

Impacts (voluntary)

Reference- a function associated with the subject of thought with which a given linguistic expression is correlated.

Estimated

Emotive (emotionally expressive)

Rechargeable- the property of language to accumulate, accumulate people’s knowledge. Subsequently, this knowledge is perceived by descendants.

Metalinguistic

Aesthetic- The ability of language to be a means of exploration and description in terms of the language itself.

Ritual and etc.

Wide scope of application - natural language is known to the entire national community;

The presence of a large number of rules, some of which are formulated explicitly (rules of grammar), others implicitly (rules of meaning and use);

Flexibility - natural language is applicable to describe any, including new, situations;

Openness - natural language allows the speaker to generate new signs (words) that are understandable to the interlocutor, as well as use existing signs with new meanings;

Dynamic - natural language quickly adapts to the diverse needs of interpersonal interaction between people.

In connection with the development of science and technology, formal languages ​​have emerged that are used by specialists in their professional activities. Moreover, many formal languages ​​have international use.

A formal language is a language in which the same combinations of signs always have the same meaning. Formal languages ​​include systems of mathematical and chemical symbols, musical notation, Morse code and many others. The formal language is the universally used decimal number system, which allows you to name and write numbers, as well as perform arithmetic operations on them. Formal languages ​​include the programming languages ​​that we will learn about in computer science classes.

A feature of formal languages ​​is that all the rules in them are specified in explicit form, which ensures the unambiguous recording and perception of messages in these languages.

The same information can be expressed in different ways. A person can present information in symbolic or figurative form (Fig. 1.3).

The presentation of information in one form or another is otherwise called coding.

Representation of information using some sign system is discrete (composed of individual values). The figurative presentation of information is continuous.

THE MOST IMPORTANT

To save and transmit information to another person, a person records it using signs. A sign (set of signs) is a substitute for an object that allows the transmitter of information to evoke an image of the object in the mind of the recipient of the information.

Language is a sign system used by a person to express his thoughts and communicate with other people. There are natural and formal languages.

A person can present information in natural languages, formal languages, and in various figurative forms.

Presentation of information in any language or in figurative form is called encoding.

Questions and tasks

1. What is a sign? Give examples of signs used in human communication.

2. What do a pictogram and a symbol have in common? What is the difference between them?

H. What is a sign system? Try to describe the Russian language as a sign system. Describe the decimal number system as a sign system.

4. What type of writing (letter-sound, syllabic, ideographic) does the English writing belong to? Germans; French; Spaniards?

5. Which languages ​​are currently the most widely spoken in the world? (The answer can be found in encyclopedias or on the Internet.)

b. What type of languages ​​(natural or formal) can the naval flag alphabet be classified as?

7. Compare natural and formal languages:

a) by scope of application;

b) according to the rules of operating with language signs.

8. Why did people need formal languages?

9. In what cases can signs of formal languages ​​be included in texts in natural language? Where did you encounter this?

Binary coding

Keywords:

Discretization alphabet

Power of the alphabet

Binary alphabet

Binary coding

Binary code width

1 . Z. 1. Converting information from continuous

Shapes to discrete

To solve his problems, a person often has to transform existing information from one form of representation to another. For example, when reading aloud, information is converted from discrete (text) form to continuous (sound). During a dictation in a Russian language lesson, on the contrary, information is transformed from a continuous form (the teacher’s voice) into a discrete one (students’ notes).

Information presented in discrete form is much easier to transmit, store or automatically process. Therefore, in computer technology, much attention is paid to methods for converting information from continuous to discrete form.

Information discretization is the process of converting information from a continuous form of representation into a discrete one,

Let's look at the essence of the information sampling process using an example.

Meteorological stations have recording instruments for continuous recording of atmospheric pressure. The result of their work is curves showing how pressure has changed over long periods of time (barograms). One of these curves, drawn by the device during seven hours of observation, is shown in Fig. 1.4.

Based on the information received, you can build a table in which the instrument readings at the beginning of measurements and at the end of each hour of observation will be entered (Fig. 1.5).

Rice. 1.5. Table built using a barogram

The resulting table does not give a completely complete picture of how the pressure changed during the observation period: for example, the highest pressure value that occurred during the fourth hour of observation is not indicated. But if you tabulate the pressure values ​​observed every half hour or 15 minutes, the new table will give a more complete picture of how the pressure changed.

Thus, we converted information presented in continuous form (barogram, curve) into discrete form (table) with some loss of accuracy.

In the future, you will become familiar with ways to discretely represent audio and graphic information.

Binary coding

In general, to represent information in discrete form, it must be expressed using symbols in some natural or formal language. There are thousands of such languages. Each language has its own alphabet.

Alphabet is a set of different symbols (signs) used to represent information. The power of the alphabet is the number of symbols (signs) included in it.

Rice. 1.7. Scheme for converting a character of an arbitrary alphabet into binary code

If the cardinality of the original alphabet is greater than two, then to encode a symbol of this alphabet you will need not one, but several binary symbols. In other words, the serial number of each character of the original alphabet will be associated with a chain (sequence) of several binary characters.

The rule for binary encoding of alphabet characters with power greater than two is represented by the diagram in Fig. 1.8.

L L LL

Chains of three binary symbols are obtained by adding two-digit binary codes to the right with the symbol O or 1. As a result, there are 8 three-digit binary code combinations - twice as many as two-digit ones:

Accordingly, a four-digit binary code allows you to get 16 code combinations, a five-digit one - 32, She (UTIZNACHNYY - 64, etc.

Please note that 2 = 2 1, 4 2 2, 8 = 23, 16 = 24, 32 = 25 etc. d.

If the number of code combinations is denoted by the letter N, and the bit depth of the binary code by the letter i, then the identified pattern in general form will be written as follows:

Task. The leader of the Multi tribe instructed his minister to develop a binary code and translate all important information into it. What depth of binary code will be required if the alphabet used by the Multi tribe contains 16 characters? Write down all code combinations.

Solution. Since the Multi tribe alphabet consists of 16 characters, they need 16 code combinations. In this case, the length (bit depth) of the binary code is determined from the ratio: 16 2 i. From here

To write down all the code combinations of four O and 1, we use the diagram in Fig. 1.8: 0000, 0001, 0010, 0011, 0100, 0101,

The website http://school-collection.eduxu/ hosts the virtual laboratory “Digital Scales”. With its help, you can independently discover the difference method - one of the ways to obtain the binary code of entire de-

Language— a system of signs that have meaning. Language is a way of existence of consciousness and communication between man and man. First of all, you need to understand that consciousness is inextricably linked with language as a certain sign system. Sign- a material object (phenomenon, event), acting as a representative of another object and, therefore, reproducing its properties.

There are linguistic signs (part of a certain sign system) and non-linguistic signs (including copies, signs, symptoms). The “languages” of fine art, theater, cinema, dance, music, etc. can be considered as sign systems. Sign systems have arisen and are developing as a material form in which consciousness and thinking are carried out.

The initial sign system is ordinary spoken, natural language. In the language they distinguish speech - language in action, in a situation of communication, primarily oral, secondly written.

Thinking (consciousness) and language are inextricably linked, but not identical. The difference between them is that thought is a reflection of objective reality, while the word is a way of consolidating, expressing thoughts and at the same time a means of transmitting thoughts to other people.

Language serves as a condition for mutual understanding between people, as well as a person’s awareness of reality and himself. The means of facilitating the embodiment of thoughts in linguistic form are various types of speech: oral, written, internal (“think to yourself”). Speech is the process of using language to communicate.

Word as a unit of language, it has two sides: external, sound (phonetic) and internal, semantic (semantic). Both of them are products of long-term socio-historical development. The unity of these sides creates a word in which the functions of sign and meaning are fused.

So, consciousness and language are one. In this unity, the determining side is consciousness, thinking. Consciousness reflects reality, and language designates and expresses it. Language is a way of existence of consciousness.

Natural (verbal, auditory)— ordinary human language. Artificial is the language of signs and symbols. The first arises spontaneously in the process of communication between members of a certain social group. The second is created by people for some special purpose (languages ​​of mathematics, logic, ciphers, etc.). A characteristic feature of natural languages ​​is the polysemy of words, while artificial ones are unambiguous and precise. Let's take a closer look at these languages.

Natural language represents the richest developing integral system. Its elementary unit, the “atom” of language, is the word, which serves to name objects, persons, processes, properties, etc. Since its inception, natural language has continuously changed - this was due to the interaction of cultures, scientific and technological progress, etc. Some words lose their meanings over time (“phlogiston”, “caloric”), others acquire new meanings (“satellite” as a spacecraft).

Natural language seems to live its own life. It includes many nuances and features, which makes it difficult to accurately express an idea (especially a scientific one) in words. This is not helped by the presence in natural language of many figurative expressions, archaisms, borrowed words, hyperboles, idioms, metaphors, etc. In addition, natural language is rich in exclamations and interjections, the meaning of which is difficult to convey out of context.

Constructed languages ​​- sign systems created by people for use in limited areas where accuracy, rigor, unambiguity, conciseness and simplicity of expression are necessary and sufficient. This is especially true for scientific purposes.

There are specialized and non-specialized languages. The latter are intended mainly for international communication. The most common of them is Esperanto. Specialized artificial languages ​​include formalized symbol systems in various fields of science (mathematics, physics, chemistry, logic, linguistics, etc.), as well as a rapidly developing computer language that more and more fully models the natural language. Artificial languages ​​are a complement to natural languages ​​and exist only on their basis.