Knowing a language
What does it mean to know a language? This question was recently asked on social media and got me thinking about language and epistemology. As a polyglot and philosophy student, I’m interested to know what it means to know a language. However, before looking for an answer, it’s important that we first consider what is a language and distinguish between different kinds of knowledge.
I. What a language is and is not
There are many languages. English, Mandarin, programming languages like Ruby, non-verbal languages like hand gestures (actually used to make a philosophical argument, see the work of G.E. Moore), even fictional languages like Elvish, are all examples of languages. But, as Elliott Sober remarked, giving examples isn’t the same thing as saying what something is (1).
What’s missing, then, is a definition (or what philosophers like to call an analysis), giving necessary and sufficient conditions. However, as Alex Byrne suggested, philosophers are really bad at this (2). Instead, it seems like they’re better, or at least more successful, at constructing theories about what X isn’t than what it is (more on this below). That said, I’ll now try and fail at both.
Firstly, a language isn’t a mere means of communication. There are many means of communication. There’s phone-calling, emailing, even sending messages in a bottle counts. But surely none of those things is a language, certainly not a bottle! A language seems more like a system than a means of communication, so it’s important not to confuse them. Secondly, a language isn’ merely communicative behaviour like, say, frog mating calls. Such signalling, however adaptive, lacks the sort of semantical structure that a language seems to express and convey. Thirdly, a language isn’t patternless but seems to have implicit and/or explicit rules for its syntax. So, finally, we might say that something is a language if and only if it is a system of communication with semantical structure and syntactical rules. But that may later turn out to be only a necessary and not sufficient condition for language or perhaps not even that (let me know what you think in the comments). Anyway, let’s move on and distinguish some different kinds of knowledge.
II: Different kinds of knowledge
Aside: Philosophers have long struggled to answer what knowledge is. It seems like many used to think that knowledge was justified true belief (JTB Theory of Knowledge), that is until Gettier published a paper which rather convincingly demonstrates, through two cases, that JTB isn’t sufficient for knowledge. We’ll focus instead on something slightly less controversial.
There are at least three different kinds of knowledge: propositional, personal and procedural. Propositional knowledge (also called knowledge-that) concerns (what philosophers call propositions) things that can be either true or false. Personal knowledge (also called knowledge-of) concerns nouns (persons, places, and things). And procedural knowledge (also called knowledge-how) concerns how-to knowledge like riding a bicycle or baking a pie.
Unfortunately, English is rather confusing and cumbersome when it comes to questions about knowledge. It uses just a single verb for all kinds of knowledge whereas other languages use different verbs to distinguish between different kinds of knowledge. For example, French uses the verbs savoir for propositional knowledge and connaître for personal knowledge. Similarly, German uses the verbs wissen for propositional knowledge and kennen for personal knowledge.
So, given that, the initial question seems rather vague about which kind of knowledge is being implied, so let’s move on and make it more precise.
III. What it means to know a language
If someone asks you ‘parlez-vous français?’, they’re asking whether you can speak French. However, you wouldn’t ask computer programmers if they speak Ruby, since that isn’t really a spoken language. You could instead ask if they know Ruby but, back to the initial question, what does it mean to know a language? An answer to that question seems to depend on the kind of knowledge being referred to in the context of the question.
If I were asked: ‘parlez-vous français?’ I’d reply ‘Non!’, as I cannot speak French beyond a few simple words and common phrases. But I know that ‘non’ is French for ‘no’. Which is to say that I have some propositional knowledge about French, even though I don’t know French in the sense that's usually meant when someone is asked if they know a language. So, what sense is meant?
Well, it’s usually not procedural. For example, I can count up to 10 in French. However, knowing how to count to 10 in French doesn’t really count as knowing French, does it? Just like how knowing a few words and phrases doesn’t count, at least, not in the sense that’s meant when someone is asked if they know a language. So, again, what sense is meant?
Initially I thought the sense that was meant is procedural (at a level of mastery). But that doesn’t seem right. For example, native speakers of a language have likely mastered the grammar of their language and yet might struggle with having to explain the grammatical rules of their language, which seems like procedural knowledge. So, if the sense that’s usually meant isn’t propositional or procedural then that leaves the possibility that it’s personal. Personal knowledge is about nouns and language seems to be a thing about which we can be said to have personal knowledge of.
One can have personal knowledge of, say, a building, person, or a city. When we ask someone if they know Robarts library or a cool contemporary philosopher or Toronto, we are usually referring to personal and not propositional or procedural knowledge. So I think that’s the sense that’s usually meant when we ask what it means to know a language. And, like a library, person, or city, it takes time and regular contact to develop knowledge of a language—which makes sense!
Aside: But, alas, knowing German hasn’t helped me to understand what some continental philosophers meant to say.
This is a photo I took of a street button that’s presumably intended for people with impaired vision. However, how are they supposed to see that and why is the audible signal, which they might depend on for crossing the street, not automatic?
References
Sober, E. (2020). Core Questions in Philosophy. 8E. Routledge.
Rosen. G. et al. (2018). Norton’s Introduction to Philosophy. 2E. W.W. Norton.