Psychology

Language can be defined as a particular and a more specific system of decoding and encoding information. It can also be defined as a means of communicating which entails the use of conventional symbols and sounds. The term language has also been used severally to denote or refer to the natural languages which characterize the most common means of communication which is highly considered peculiar among human beings. Language is thus defined as the process of communicating feelings and thoughts through an arbitrary system of making signals such as gestures, voice, sounds and the use of written symbols (Hattiangagi, 1997).  On the other hand lexicon can be defined as the connection between a language and the knowledge expressed in that language. Different languages have different vocabularies and lexicon gives a way of combining this collection of words to express an unrestricted range of concepts.

Every kind of language has its own unique set of vocabularies and yet it has a full set of grammatical mechanisms which are used in combining its varied stock of words in various ways to express a broad spectrum of an open ended range of ideas and concepts.

The study of language, its features and structure can and has been addressed in different numerous disciplines such as in education, anthropology, neurolinguistics and philosophy (Brian, 1999).

However, the very fundamental and highly influential studies in the study of language originate from psycholinguistics and linguistics. Human beings are believed to be one among the very most supreme creatures with an exemplary capability of developing and acquiring language, an aspect which is highly necessitated by the existence of high levels of intelligence and reasoning and most probably well developed structure of the vocal tract and voice box.

It is therefore very evident that animals also have their very own unique ways of communicating. For example, whales communicate by singing while bees on the other hand tail wag. However, there are very divergent and diverse differences which characterize and distinguish human communication from other creatures (Robinson, 2001). Numerous features do exist which appear to be common and characterize all human languages which have been proposed. Some of these unique features of language include

Displacement  is a common feature of language which refers to the ability of an individual to speak not only about what is happening at that given period of time  and place but  also the ability to refer to other situations either past or future unreal or real. Displacement refers to the ability to mentally reflect on issues either of the past or future and talk about them even without watching or observing them at present.

Arbitrariness  This is another common feature of language which denotes that there exist no natural connection among sound, word and the thing it denotes.  This is to say, in general language or communication it is difficult to tell the real meaning of a word by simply just looking at it (Wettstein, 2004). Thus, in order to be in a position to understand arbitrary words in a given language one must have mastery of a specific language. However, in various languages there exist several iconic symbols which can be understood or mastered without entirely having to master the entire language.
Productivity  Productivity is a common language feature which is also referred to as creativity or open endedness. Productivity explains that the existence of a potential number of utterances, words as well as the meanings in human language is definitely infinite. For example, human beings can create words such as property in Cyprus, my space codes and the like but the number of these particular terms may have no limit in any given communication. In all animal communication all signal produced have fixed references which explain that one signal can only stand for one idea at time and its meaning cannot by any chance be broadened.

Cultural transmission  Although each and every individual is born with a fixed set of genetic predispositions for language use, that is the nature and shape of our vocal tracts, cultural transmissions explains that this virtue does not rule out and determine the kind of language we are going to acquire or achieve as our mother tongue. For example, a British child brought up in china and raised up by a Chinese family is bound to speak Chinese and not English (Collinge, 1990). Cultural orientations greatly influence and shape language acquisition patterns in human beings especially during the formative early childhood years.

The process of language comprehension and more so language processing is enormously a complicated task usually characterized by quite unique features.  Psycholinguistic studies do recognize four unique levels of language structures and processing. That is sound, syntax, pragmatics and meaning. First and foremost psycholinguistic studies put much emphasis on the importance and significance of sound or rather phonetics and phonology as the central most points of focus in language processing (Romaine, 2001). Sound production and especially articulation of phonetics and the perception of the so called acoustic phonetics is usually the vocal point in language processing and acquisition process.

Thus, phonology which forms the very first level of language structure and processing is mainly concerned with describing the process used in combining sounds to form or create permissible sequences. The most important reason for acquiring congruent knowledge of phonological rules is basically vested towards creating help or assistance in the process of segmenting spoken language.
Meaning or rather semantics and morphology form the second most important level of language structure and processing. Semantics in this case is concerned with the relationships which exist between the meanings in the lexicon, commonly known as lexical semantics. Therefore, in this case the most import focus and area of study is centered at the sentence level which entails studying and describing the meaning of different relationships commonly expressed in the entire sentence through examining the relationship between its own words (Stone, et al, 2004). Morphology on the extreme contrast puts much emphasis on the study of structure of words. Morphemes thus form the smallest units of word structure in any given sentence.

Syntax and the study of syntax form another very import level in language structure and processing. This is the third most crucial level which is concerned with the process of explaining and defining the structure of grammatically acceptable and correct sentences. Linguistics strongly believe that different native speakers of different languages possess tacit knowledge and competences in language which they might not always be aware of (Michael, 2001). In an attempt towards defining and describing phrases and phrase structure, experts and researchers have devised a set of rule system which involves the organization of noun phrases, prepositions and verbs known as phrase structure and this forms the very last crucial level of language structure and processing known as pragmatics, which is concerned with rules and principles in language acquisition and articulation.

Cognitive psychology is defined as the scientific investigation of cognition in human beings which encompasses all our diverse mental capabilities such as learning, perceiving, remembering, reasoning, thinking and understanding. Language processing in cognitive psychology plays a very significant role which helps in coding of information, decoding, interpretation and retrieval of information from memory (Moats, Foorman, 2003). Language processing is entirely significant in interpretation of signals as information is coded in memory. Thus, internal mental process can highly be understood and described in terms of the algorithms and rules as those observed in the information processing model. This makes it easier to even understand the basic functions of the mind.