"Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols" -

"A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which the members of a society interact in terms of their total culture"

"Language is the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols"

"Language is an instrument of social interaction with a clear communicative purpose"

Language is a systematic set of arbitrary symbols, primarily vocal, but may also be visual, which have conventionalized meanings to which they refer. It is acquired by all people in much the same way, operates in a speech community or culture, is essentially human and is used for communication.

- It is a form of social interaction

- Its purpose is to communicate

- It involves a high degree of unpredictability and creativity

- It requires a reduction of uncertainty on behalf of the participants

-It entails both verbal and non-verbal language

Following Yule (1998), the communicative properties of human language are:

To talk about events remote in space or time from the situation of the speaker

• displacement

• productivity

• arbitrariness

• discreteness

The capacity to produce new sentences

• arbitrariness

• discretness

• productivity

• displacement

It is transmitted from one generation to the next

• productivity

• discreteness

• displacement

• cultural transmission