++EngLiSh DePaRtMeN++

Because we have a word language,we assume that there must be some corresponding entity for the word to denote However, the linguist Saussure (1969 [1916]:19) points out to us that ‘language is not an entity’. Defining something like ‘The English Language’ turns out to be a difficult task.Part of the problem is that the language has so many different aspects.We can view it as a social fact,as a psychological state,as a set of structures,or as a collection of outputs.A language is a social fact, a kind of social contract.It exists not in an individual,but in a community.

It is a treasure buried by the practice of speech in people belonging to the same community,a grammatical system which has virtual existence in each brain, or more exactly in the brains of a collection of individuals;because language is not complete in any individual,but exists only in the collectivity. (Saussure 1969 [1916]:30.

A language can also be viewed as a mental reality. It exists in the heads of people who speak it,and we assume its existence because of people’s ability to learn languages in general and their practice in dealing with at least one particular language.‘ [A grammar is a mental entity,represented in the mind/brain of an individual and characterising that individual’s linguistic capacity’(Lightfoot 2000:231). Note that Lightfoot here talks of a grammar rather than of a language,but one possible definition of a language is precisely that it is the grammatical system which allows speakers to produce appropriate utterances.‘Grammar’ has as many meanings as ‘language'.

In this sense,we might see a language as a set of choices,a set of contrasts. We can say Kim kissed the crocodile or The crocodile kissed Kim, but we cannot choose to say, as a meaningful sentence of English, Kissed crocodile Kim the. There is a system to what orders the words have to come in if they are to make sense. We choose,in English,whether to say towel or cowl,but we cannot choose, in English,to say something with a consonant half-way between the /t/ of towel and the /k/ of cowl to mean something which is part towel and part cowl (or,indeed,to mean anything else). There is a system to what sounds we use in English. So a language can be viewed as a system of systems. This view is usually attributed to Meillet: ‘Every language forms a system in which everything is interconnected’ (Meillet 1903:407). But he has forerunners who make the same point in similar terms,e.g.: ‘Every language is a system all of whose parts interrelate and interact organically’(von der Gabelentz 1901:481, as cited and translated by Matthews 2001:6.

Another alternative way of considering language is to ignore the way in which speakers go about constructing utterances, and consider instead their output, an actual set of utterances or (in a more idealised form) a set of sentences. A language can be defined as a set of sentences:

...he totality of utterances that can be made in a speech community is the language of that speech community. (Bloomfield 1957 [1926]:26) [A] language [is] a set (finite or infinite) of sentences,each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of
elements.(Chomsky 1957:13).

The question of whether we should be dealing with utterances (things produced,whether in speech of in writing,by speakers) or sentences raises another potential distinction.Chomsky (1986) introduces the notion of a distinction between E-language and I-language.Smith (1994) already talks of this distinction as a ‘customary’ one, which may be an overstatement of the case,but he draws the distinction very clearly:

E-language is the ‘external’ manifestation of the ‘internally’ (i.e.mentally) represented grammars (or I-languages) of many individuals. E-languages are the appropriate domain for social,political,mathematical or logical statements;I-languages are the appropriate domain for statements about individual knowledge. That this apparently narrower domain is worth considering follows from the fact that,as a species,humans appear to be essentially identical in their linguistic abilities....[E]very child brings the same intellectual apparatus (known as ‘universal grammar’) to bear on the task of acquiring his or her first language.(Smith 1994:646)/(giriums.blogspot.com)