# Design Features: What Makes Language Language Languages I · Introduction to Linguistics · https://tryals.app/learn/languages-i/design-features-what-makes-language-language ## 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. ## Practice questions 10 of this lesson's 13 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app. ### 1. Why does duality of patterning matter more than the other design features for a system's expressive power? A. A small inventory of meaningless units can be recombined into an unbounded set of meaningful ones B. It ensures that individual symbols have no inherent, natural connection to their referents C. It allows speakers to refer freely to events and entities remote in either time or space D. It guarantees that communicative signals are categorically distinct rather than continuous gradients **Answer:** A. A small inventory of meaningless units can be recombined into an unbounded set of meaningful ones **Why:** Because it breaks the cap. One signal per message means the number of messages equals the number of signals; two layers mean 40 meaningless sounds generate tens of thousands of words. The other options describe arbitrariness, displacement, and discreteness, which are distinct Hockett features. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/design-features-what-makes-language-language/why-does-duality-of-patterning-matter-more-than-the-other-design ### 2. Sort each observation by the design feature it illustrates. **Answer:** - Arbitrariness: Sound isn't dog, Woof versus guau - Displacement: Century-ago talk, Unvisited cities - Productivity: Unheard sentence - Cultural transmission: Tokyo upbringing **Why:** The onomatopoeia item is the interesting one: it looks like a counter-example to arbitrariness and is in fact evidence for it, since the same sound is rendered by different conventional forms in different languages. Motivation and convention are not exclusive. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/design-features-what-makes-language-language/sort-each-observation-by-the-design-feature-it-illustrates ### 3. Arbitrariness means there is never any resemblance between a form and its meaning. **Answer:** False **Why:** **False.** Arbitrariness is the claim that resemblance is not *required*, not that it never occurs. Sound symbolism replicates across languages, and signed languages contain a great deal of iconicity while remaining fully conventional and productive, which is why the old argument that iconicity disqualified them was a mistake. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/design-features-what-makes-language-language/arbitrariness-means-there-is-never-any-resemblance-between-a-form-and ### 4. Roughly how many distinct sounds does a typical language use to build its entire vocabulary, to the nearest ten? **Answer:** 40 (within ±15) **Why:** **About 40**, with enormous variation: Rotokas is often cited with around eleven phonemes and some Khoisan languages with well over a hundred. The point of the number is the ratio, a few dozen meaningless units against a vocabulary of tens of thousands. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/design-features-what-makes-language-language/roughly-how-many-distinct-sounds-does-a-typical-language-use-to-build ### 5. Which follow from a communication system LACKING duality of patterning? A. The system cannot refer to anything absent B. The number of messages is limited by the number of signals C. The system cannot build long messages from short parts D. Every new message requires a new signal to be learned **Answer:** B. The number of messages is limited by the number of signals; C. The system cannot build long messages from short parts; D. Every new message requires a new signal to be learned **Why:** The first three are the same limitation stated three ways. Displacement is independent, the bee dance refers to a food source that is elsewhere and in the past, and has no duality whatsoever, which is exactly why the features must be assessed separately. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/design-features-what-makes-language-language/which-follow-from-a-communication-system-lacking-duality-of ### 6. Complete the account of the design features. **Answer:** The property that lets meaningless units combine into meaningful ones is **duality of patterning**. The property that lets a speaker refer to what is remote in time or space is **displacement**. The property that lets speakers produce sentences never heard before is **productivity**. And the fact that a child learns whichever language surrounds them is **cultural** transmission. **Why:** Learning the four in this order is useful because they answer four different questions: how the system scales, what it can be about, what it can produce, and how it is acquired. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/design-features-what-makes-language-language/complete-the-account-of-the-design-features ### 7. Match each design feature to the question it answers about a system. **Answer:** - Duality of patterning → How does a small inventory produce unlimited messages? - Displacement → Can it refer to what is not here and now? - Discreteness → Is the signal categorical or a gradient? - Reflexiveness → Can the system be used to talk about itself? **Why:** Reflexiveness is the one students overlook, and this lesson is an instance of it, an entire discipline is only possible because language can take itself as an object. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/design-features-what-makes-language-language/match-each-design-feature-to-the-question-it-answers-about-a-system ### 8. Hockett gave a single fixed list of design features that has been used unchanged ever since. **Answer:** False **Why:** **False.** The lists vary across his own publications — thirteen in the most-cited version, sixteen later — and have been revised by others since. Treating the count as the substance misses the method, which is to name properties precisely enough that a system can be checked against them. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/design-features-what-makes-language-language/hockett-gave-a-single-fixed-list-of-design-features-that-has-been ### 9. Iconicity is widespread in signed languages, yet they remain full human languages under Hockett's framework. What explains this apparent tension with arbitrariness? A. Iconicity operates only when duality of patterning is wholly missing B. Arbitrariness matters solely for vocal units rather than visual signs C. Arbitrariness and iconicity can coexist rather than mutually exclude D. Signed languages rely on genetic transmission instead of conventions **Answer:** C. Arbitrariness and iconicity can coexist rather than mutually exclude **Why:** Treating arbitrariness as absolute overlooks that linguistic features exist on a spectrum. Iconicity does not preclude conventionalised grammar, just as sound symbolism does not invalidate spoken language structure. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/design-features-what-makes-language-language/iconicity-is-widespread-in-signed-languages-yet-they-remain-full ### 10. With 40 meaningless units and words up to 5 units long, roughly how many possible word forms exist, in millions, before any constraint on legal sequences? **Answer:** 100 (within ±25) **Why:** Around **100 million**: forty to the fifth is 102.4 million on its own, and the shorter lengths add little. The number is absurdly larger than any vocabulary, which is the point: duality gives so much headroom that every language can afford to leave most possible forms unused. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/design-features-what-makes-language-language/with-40-meaningless-units-and-words-up-to-5-units-long-roughly-how