Hockett's List
Charles Hockett proposed a set of design features to characterise human language. They allow precise comparisons with animal communication.
Key features include:
- Arbitrariness: sign forms have no necessary connection to their meaning.
- Duality of patterning: meaningless units combine into meaningful ones.
- Productivity: speakers can create and understand novel utterances.
- Displacement: language can refer to things remote in time or space.
- Cultural transmission: languages are learned rather than genetically inherited.
- Discreteness: signals consist of categorical units, not gradients.
- Interchangeability: speakers can produce any message they can receive.
- Reflexiveness: language can describe language itself.
Why duality matters
Duality of patterning is fundamental. A typical language has around 40 distinct, meaningless sounds. These combine into thousands of words and endless sentences. Without duality, a system needs one unique signal per message.
Arbitrariness and its limits
Arbitrariness is genuine, but it has limits.
- Onomatopoeia is partially motivated, yet still conventionalised. A dog barks woof in English, guau in Spanish, and wan in Japanese.
- Sound symbolism links certain speech sounds directly to concepts, such as high vowels with small objects.
- Signed languages exhibit considerable iconicity, where signs visually resemble their referents.
Iconicity comes in degrees. It does not stop a signed system from being conventional, dual, and fully productive.
Common pitfall: treating these features as an all-or-nothing checklist. They exist in degrees and combinations. Their true value lies in pinpointing exactly which properties any communication system possesses.