Properties of human language
While we tend to think of 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 (or not).
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.