PROPERTIES OF HUMAN
LANGUAGE.
Communication as the primary function of
human language, it is not a distinguishing
feature. All creatures communicate in some
way. However, we suspect that other
creatures are not reflecting on the way they
create their communicative messages or
reviewing how they work. Humans are
clearly able to reflect on language and its
uses. This is reflexivity. The property of
reflexivity (or “reflexiveness”) accounts for
the fact that we can use language to think
and talk about language itself, making it
one of the distinguishing features of human
language. Indeed, without this general
ability, we wouldn’t be able to reflect on or
identify any of the other distinct properties
of human language.