ABSTRACT
Dear departed Aunty Betty, requiescat in pace; she was rarely at a loss for words, her written and spoken communications were largely of trivial gossip, and in the language of her times. Communication, speech, words and language are not mere redundant synonyms, but themselves capture the hierarchical categorisation of communication generally, and the nested subsets which are included therein. Birds communicate, so do neurons; vocalisation is one mode of communication in the animal world, along with colour changes reflecting mood in the squid, and speech is a form of meaningful vocalisation which we humans uniquely employ. English is one of the world’s many language channels to that end, and writing is just another medium which can be employed. Precision in language usage is important in defining concepts, not least when we seek to define language itself. Workers in the field of artificial intelligence sometimes wonder whether a complex IT system can ever model, or ‘understand’, itself, and philosophers and neuroscientists similarly ask whether a human brain can ever fully comprehend or understand all its operations. Can language adequately and comprehensively define or describe itself? Yes, but it requires precision of terminology and agreement as to correct or intended usage. We must remember that communication is not just language, and language is not just speech (there are also sign and writing). Language is essentially propositional, and composed as it is of sub-units (words, themselves composed of phonemes or graphemes), there may be a near infinity of such possible propositional statements.
