What is a language deficit?

Abstract

The starting point of this paper is a consideration of what a linguistic system can offer humans. On one hand, it provides the means of converting primary, analogic data derived from the senses and our contact with nature into digitalised and formalised information. The use of a linguistic code allows us to situate ourselves in the world, to make singular the general.

At the same time, language allows the development of a creative faculty which can free us from limits of how we need to perceive nature to be. This can be seen in poetry, in metaphors, in irony... without implying any anomalies in linguistic or other behaviour.

It is in the equilibrium between these functions we attribute to language that we can find the system's "normal" operating level. Any uncontrolled imbalance in either of the functions can be regarded as a language deficit.

Finally, the paper also considers the close relationship underlying language acquisition and learning processes and this functional aspect of language.