ABSTRACT
As you read in chapter 1, one of the properties of language unique to humans is the characteristic of arbitrariness. Humans are arbitrary when they assign a name to an entity, a referent, whether it’s a person, place, thing, condition, or idea. Throughout the world, the same or similar objects have different names; even within the same language family in a given country, the same object, condition, or idea may have one name in one region, and another name in another region.
