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Concept
Hockett's design features
Résumé
Hockett's Design Features are a set of features that characterize human language and set it apart from animal communication. They were defined by linguist Charles F. Hockett in the 1960s. He called these characteristics the design features of language. Hockett originally believed there to be 13 design features. While primate communication utilizes the first 9 features, the final 4 features (displacement, productivity, cultural transmission, and duality) are reserved for humans. Hockett later added prevarication, reflexiveness, and learnability to the list as uniquely human characteristics. He asserted that even the most basic human languages possess these 16 features.
Charles F. Hockett
Charles Hockett was an American linguist and anthropologist, who lived from 1916 to 2000. Hockett graduated from Yale in 1939, and later taught at both Cornell and Rice. Hockett made significant contributions to structural linguistics, as well as the study of Native American, Chinese, and Fijian languages. His work focused mainly on detailed linguistic analysis, particularly morphology and phonology, and on the concepts and tools that facilitated such analysis.
Up until the 1950s, language was largely viewed as a social-behavioral phenomenon. Hockett was challenged in this belief by Noam Chomsky, who argued that language is biologically based and innate. Chomsky believed that humans share a universal grammar that ties all languages together. Hockett staunchly opposed this "Chomskyan" concept of the nature of language. However, Hockett is most famous for defining what he called the design features of language, which demonstrated his beliefs about the commonalities among human languages.
Vocal-auditory channel
Refers to the idea that speaking/hearing is the mode humans use for language. When Hockett first defined this feature, it did not take sign language into account, which reflects the ideology of orality that was prevalent during the time. This feature has since been modified to include other channels of language, such as tactile-visual or chemical-olfactory.
Source officielle
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