In
neuropsychology
Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology concerned with how a person's cognition and behavior are related to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Professionals in this branch of psychology often focus on how injuries or illnesses of t ...
,
linguistics, and
philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any
language that has
evolved naturally in
humans through use and repetition without conscious planning or premeditation. Natural languages can take different forms, such as
speech
Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses Phonetics, phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if ...
or
signing. They are distinguished from
constructed and
formal languages such as
those used to program computers or to study
logic.
Defining natural language
Natural language can be broadly defined as different from
* artificial and
constructed languages, e.g.
computer programming languages
* constructed
international auxiliary language
An international auxiliary language (sometimes acronymized as IAL or contracted as auxlang) is a language meant for communication between people from all different nations, who do not share a common first language. An auxiliary language is primaril ...
s
* non-human
communication systems in nature such as
whale and other marine mammal vocalizations or
honey bees'
waggle dance.
All
varieties of
world languages are natural languages, including those that are associated with
linguistic prescriptivism or
language regulation. (
Nonstandard dialect
A nonstandard dialect or vernacular dialect is a dialect or language variety that has not historically benefited from the institutional support or sanction that a standard dialect has.
Like any dialect, a nonstandard dialect has an internally co ...
s can be viewed as a
wild type in comparison with
standard language
A standard language (also standard variety, standard dialect, and standard) is a language variety that has undergone substantial codification of grammar and usage, although occasionally the term refers to the entirety of a language that includes ...
s.) An
official language with a regulating academy such as
Standard French, overseen by the
Académie Française
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...
, is classified as a natural language (e.g. in the field of
natural language processing
Natural language processing (NLP) is an interdisciplinary subfield of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human language, in particular how to program computers to pro ...
), as its prescriptive aspects do not make it constructed enough to be a constructed language or controlled enough to be a
controlled natural language.
Controlled languages
Controlled natural languages are subsets of natural languages whose grammars and dictionaries have been restricted in order to reduce
ambiguity
Ambiguity is the type of meaning in which a phrase, statement or resolution is not explicitly defined, making several interpretations plausible. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It is thus an attribute of any idea or statement ...
and complexity. This may be accomplished by decreasing usage of
superlative
Comparison is a feature in the morphology or syntax of some languages whereby adjectives and adverbs are inflected to indicate the relative degree of the property they define exhibited by the word or phrase they modify or describe. In languages t ...
or
adverbial forms, or
irregular verbs
A regular verb is any verb whose conjugation follows the typical pattern, or one of the typical patterns, of the language to which it belongs. A verb whose conjugation follows a different pattern is called an irregular verb. This is one instance ...
. Typical purposes for developing and implementing a controlled natural language are to aid understanding by non-native speakers or to ease computer processing. An example of a widely-used controlled natural language is
Simplified Technical English, which was originally developed for
aerospace and
avionics industry manuals.
International constructed languages
Although constructed,
International auxiliary language
An international auxiliary language (sometimes acronymized as IAL or contracted as auxlang) is a language meant for communication between people from all different nations, who do not share a common first language. An auxiliary language is primaril ...
s such as
Esperanto
Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...
and
Interlingua are not considered natural languages, with the possible exception of true native speakers of such languages.
[Gopsill, F. P., "A historical overview of international languages". In ''International languages: A matter for Interlingua''. Sheffield, England: British Interlingua Society, 1990.] Natural languages evolve, through fluctuations in vocabulary and syntax, to incrementally improve human communication. In contrast, Esperanto was created by Polish ophthalmologist
L. L. Zamenhof
L. L. Zamenhof (15 December 185914 April 1917) was an ophthalmologist who lived for most of his life in Warsaw. He is best known as the creator of Esperanto, the most widely used constructed international auxiliary language.
Zamenhof first dev ...
in the late 19th century.
Some natural languages have become organically "standardized" through the synthesis of two or more pre-existing natural languages over a relatively short period of time through the development of a
pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from s ...
, which is not considered a language, into a stable
creole language. A creole such as
Haitian Creole
Haitian Creole (; ht, kreyòl ayisyen, links=no, ; french: créole haïtien, links=no, ), commonly referred to as simply ''Creole'', or ''Kreyòl'' in the Creole language, is a French-based creole language spoken by 10–12million people wor ...
has its own grammar, vocabulary and literature. It is spoken by over 10 million people worldwide and is one of the two official languages of the
Republic of Haiti.
As of 1996, there were 350 attested families with one or more
native speakers of Esperanto.
Latino sine flexione, another international auxiliary language, is no longer widely spoken.
See also
*
*
*
*
*
Notes
References
*
ter Meulen, Alice, 2001, "Logic and Natural Language," in Goble, Lou, ed., ''The Blackwell Guide to Philosophical Logic''. Blackwell.
{{refend
Natural language processing
Neuropsychological assessment
Language
Philosophical logic
Philosophy of language
Linguistics terminology