http://oxforddictionaries.

com/definition/english/language [mass noun] the method of human

communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and
conventional way...........a system of communication used by a particular country or community

Etymology:

From the Latin, "tongue"

Alternative Definitions of Language

 "Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions

and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols."
(Edward Sapir, Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. Harcourt, Brace and
Company, 1921)

 "A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group
cooperates."
(B. Bloch and G. Trager, Outline of Linguistic Analysis. Waverly Press, 1942)

 "From now on I will consider a language to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each
finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements."
(Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, 1957)

 "[L]anguage is behaviour which utilizes body parts: the vocal apparatus and the auditory
system for oral language; the brachial apparatus and the visual system for sign language. . . .
Such body parts are controlled by none other than the brain for their functions."
(Fred C.C. Peng, Language in the Brain: Critical Assessments. Continuum, 2005)

 "A language consists of symbols that convey meaning, plus rules for combining those
symbols, that can be used to generate an infinite variety of messages."
(Wayne Weiten, Psychology: Themes And Variations, 7th ed. Thomson Wadsworth, 2007)

 "We can define language as a system of communication using sounds or symbols that
enables us to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences."
(E. Bruce Goldstein, Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday
Experience, 2nd ed. Thomson, 2008)

Origins of Language: The East Side Story

"Language began in Africa, though exactly where is a matter of controversy. East Africa was
the birthplace, according to a scenario sometimes known as the 'East Side story.' Around 3
million years ago, a major earthquake created the Great Rift Valley, splitting Africa's
inhabitants into two major groups. Our cousins, the chimps, were left living and playing in
the lush and tree-rich terrain of the humid west. But our ancestors, the proto-humans, were
stranded in the increasingly arid east, where they were forced to adapt or die. . . . They were
forced to broaden their diet, and began scavenging for meat. Better nourishment led to a
bigger brain, a greater degree of social organization and, eventually, to language.

"But more important than the exact location of language within Africa is the fact that all
human languages are remarkably similar to one another, indicating a common origin. Any
human can learn any other human language. This contrasts with, say, bird communication,
where the quacking of a duck has little in common with the trilling of a nightingale."
(Jean Aitchison, The Word Weavers: Newshounds and Wordsmiths. Cambridge University
Press, 2007)

Observations on Language

 "Would I had phrases that are not known, utterances that are strange, in new language that
has not been used, free from repetition, not an utterance which has grown stale, which men
of old have spoken."
(ancient Egyptian inscription)

 "Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary makers, but is

something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of
humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground."
(Walt Whitman)

 "A language can be compared to a sheet of paper. Thought is one side of the sheet and
sound the reverse side. Just as it is impossible to take a pair of scissors and cut one side of
the paper without at the same time cutting the other, so it is impossible in a language to
isolate sound from thought, or thought from sound."
(French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure)

 "Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden."

(Karl Kraus)

 "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."

(Ludwig Wittgenstein)
  "But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and
thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing
communication."
(Abraham Maslow)

 "All words, in every language, are metaphors."

(Marshall McLuhan)

Likenesses and Differences

"When languages come to be seriously compared with one another, the question arises: are all
languages alike, or are they different?

"Presumably everyone agrees that there are certain respects in which all languages are alike.
All languages consist of meanings, wordings and sounds; they all have names for things; they
all have melody, rhythm and syllabic articulation. Equally, everyone agrees that there are
certain respects in which languages differ: not only do they obviously have different names
for things, they also construct these names differently, have different kinds of melody and
rhythm, and different ways of wording and of sounding. The issue is, simply, which is to be
more emphasized, the uniformity or the variety. This is really the old 'analogy-anomaly'
controversy metaphorized into a modern form; but it is a critical issue. Philosophers of
language stress the universals; they make all languages look alike. Ethnographers stress the
variables; they make all languages look different. When new languages came to be described
by European linguists, from the early 17th century onwards, first the modern European
languages and then languages from further afield, both these opposing tendencies became
apparent. Either every language is treated as a version of Latin, or each language is described
in its own terms.

"The consequences of this are still with us today."

(Michael A.K. Halliday, "Ideas About Language" in Essays in Honor of Charles F. Hockett,
ed. by Frederick B. Agard et al. Brill, 1983)

Pronunciation: LANG-gwij

http://grammar.about.com/od/e/g/englishlanguageterm.htm

Definition:

The primary language of several countries (including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the
United Kingdom, and the United States) and a second language in a number of multilingual
countries (including India, Singapore, and the Philippines). See Observations, below.
English is conventionally divided into three historical periods: Old English, Middle English,
and Modern English.

Etymology:
English is derived from Anglisc, the speech of the Angles (one of the three Germanic tribes
that invaded England during the fifth century).

Observations:

 "We are speaking a bastard and beaten tongue with a very unusual grammatical history."
(John McWhorter, quoted by J. Schuesslert in The New York Times, June 14, 2009)

 "I am as thrilled by the English language as I am by a lovely woman or dreams, green as

dreams and deep as death."
(Richard Burton, The Richard Burton Diaries, ed. by Chris Williams. Yale University Press,
2013)

 "The English language is like a fleet of juggernaut trucks that goes on regardless. No form of
linguistic engineering and no amount of linguistic legislation will prevent the myriads of
change that lie ahead."
(Robert Burchfield, The English Language. Oxford University Press, 1985)

 Vocabulary of the English Language

"English has borrowed words from over 350 other languages, and over three-quarters of the
English lexicon is actually Classical or Romance in origin."
(David Crystal, English as a Global Language. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003)

 "Perhaps the two most salient characteristics of Present-Day English are its highly analytic
grammar and its immense lexicon. Both of these features originated during the M[iddle]
E[nglish] period. Although English has lost all but a handful of its inflections during ME and
has undergone little inflectional change since, ME marks only the onset of the burgeoning of
the English vocabulary to its current unparalleled size among the languages of the world.
Ever since ME, the language has been more than hospitable to loanwords from other
languages, and all subsequent periods have seen comparable influxes of loans and increases
in vocabulary."
(C. M. Millward and Mary Hayes, A Biography of the English Language, 3rd ed. Wadsworth,
2012)

 Word Order in English: SVO

"One of the major syntactic changes in the English language since Anglo-Saxon times has
been the disappearance of the S[ubject]-O[bject]-V[erb] and V[erb]-S[ubject]-O[bject] types
 of word-order, and the establishment of the S[ubject]-V[erb]-O[bject] type as normal. The S-
O-V type disappeared in the early Middle Ages, and the V-S-O type was rare after the middle
of the seventeenth century. V-S word-order does indeed still exist in English as a less
common variant, as in 'Down the road came a whole crowd of children,' but the full V-S-O
type hardly occurs today."
(Charles Barber, The English Language: A Historical Introduction, rev. ed. Cambridge Univ.
Press, 2000)

 English as a Global Language

"Today there are about 6,000 languages in the world, and half of the world's population
speaks only 10 of them. English is the single most dominant of these 10. British colonialism
initiated the spread of English across the globe; it has been spoken nearly everywhere and
has become even more prevalent since World War II, with the global reach of American
power."
(Christine Kenneally, The First Word. Viking, 2007)

"How many people in the world today speak English?

First-language speakers: 375 million
Second-language speakers: 375 million
Foreign-language speakers: 750 million
(David Graddol, The Future of English? British Council, 1997)

"There are now estimated to be 1.5 billion English speakers globally: 375 million who speak
English as their first language, 375 million as a second language and 750 million who speak
English as a foreign language. The elites of Egypt, Syria and Lebanon have dumped French in
favour of English. India has reversed its former campaign against the language of its colonial
rulers, and millions of Indian parents are now enrolling their children in English-language
schools--in recognition of the importance of English for social mobility. Since 2005, India has
had the world’s largest English-speaking population, with far many more people using the
language than before independence. Rwanda, in a move dictated as much by regional
economics as post-genocide politics, has decreed a wholesale switch to English as its
medium of instruction. And China is about to launch a colossal programme to tackle one of
the few remaining obstacles to its breakneck economic expansion: a paucity of English-
speakers.

"English has official or special status in at least 75 countries with a combined population of
two billion people. It is estimated that one out of four people worldwide speak English with
some degree of competence."
(Tony Reilly, "English Changes Lives." The Sunday Times [UK], November 11, 2012)

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/development

noun
[mass noun]

 1the process of developing or being developed:she traces the development of the

novel the paintings provide evidence of his artistic development
 a specified state of growth or advancement:the wings attain their full development
several hours after birth
 [count noun] a new and advanced product or idea:the latest developments in
information technology

 2 [count noun] an event constituting a new stage in a changing situation:I don’t think
there have been any new developments since yesterday

 3the process of converting land to a new purpose by constructing buildings or making

use of its resources:land suitable for development
 [count noun] an area of land with new buildings on it:a major housing development in
Essex

 4the process of starting to be affected by an ailment or feeling:the development of

brittle bones

 5the process of treating photographic film with chemicals to make a visible image:
agitation is carried out while a film is processed to ensure even development

 6 Chess the process of bringing one’s pieces into play in the opening phase of a game:
I sought to take advantage of Black’s defective development

http://grammar.about.com/od/d/g/Development-term.htm

Definition:

In composition, the process of adding informative and illustrative details to support the main
idea in a paragraph or essay.

Examples and Observations:

 "What the opening of an essay promises, the body of the essay must deliver. This is known
as 'developing your ideas,' but I like to use a body-building metaphor because it implies
adding not just bulk to a framework, but musculature. In other words, good essay
development strengthens, not merely fills out. . . .

"What is the best way to reinforce the main idea of your essay? You can do some by making
good use of any combination of the following six methods of development:

o Statistics
o Comparison
o Classification and Division
o Example, case-in-point
o Quotation
o Characterization, dialogue
 By using these bodybuilding elements, you are telling your readers, 'I don't expect you to
take my word for these claims; I want you to see for yourself!"
(Fred D. White, LifeWriting: Drawing from Personal Experience to Create Features You Can
Publish. Quill Driver Books, 2004)

 "Although most short papers may employ one primary pattern with other patterns woven
throughout, longer papers may have two or more primary patterns of development. For
example, if you are writing a paper on the causes and effects of child abuse in the foster care
system, you might, after the causal analysis, shift the primary focus of the essay to
prevention, thus continuing the essay with a process analysis of what the state might do to
prevent child abuse. Then you might end the essay by addressing the objections from those
defending the system, shifting the focus of the essay to argumentation. Your decision to
include other primary patterns depends on your purpose and audience. Your thesis makes
your purpose clear to your reader. Then as you develop your essay, you may integrate other
patterns into your paragraphs."
(Luis Nazario, Deborah Borchers, and William Lewis, Bridges to Better Writing. Wadsworth,
2010)

Also Known As: elaboration

http://linguistics.ucsc.edu/about/what-is-linguistics.html