Anatural language orordinary language is anyspoken language orsigned language used organically in a human community, first emerging without conscious premeditation and subject to: replication across generations of people in the community, regional expansion or contraction, and gradualinternal and structural changes.[1] The vast majority of languages in the world are natural languages. As a category, natural language includes bothstandard dialects (ones with high socialprestige) as well asnonstandard or vernacular dialects. Even anofficial language with a regulating academy such asStandard French, overseen by theAcadémie Française, is still classified as a natural language (e.g. in the field ofnatural language processing), as itsprescriptive aspects do not make it regulated enough to be considered a constructed orcontrolled natural language. Linguists broadly considerwriting to be a static visual representation of a particular natural language, though, in many cases in highlyliterate modern societies,writing itself is also now subject to the natural processes of widely spoken natural languages.
Controlled natural languages are subsets of natural languages whose grammars and dictionaries have been restricted in order to reduceambiguity and complexity. This may be accomplished by decreasing usage ofsuperlative oradverbial forms, orirregular verbs. Typical purposes for developing and implementing a controlled natural language are to aid understanding by non-native speakers or to ease computer processing. An example of a widely used controlled natural language isSimplified Technical English, which was originally developed foraerospace andavionics industry manuals.
Being constructed,International auxiliary languages such asEsperanto andInterlingua are not considered natural languages, with the possible exception of true native speakers of such languages.[4] Natural languages evolve, through fluctuations in vocabulary and syntax, to incrementally improve human communication. In contrast, Esperanto was created by Polish ophthalmologistL. L. Zamenhof in the late 19th century.
Some natural languages have become organically "standardized" through the synthesis of two or more pre-existing natural languages over a relatively short period of time through the development of apidgin, which is not considered a language, into a stablecreole language. A creole such asHaitian Creole has its own grammar, vocabulary and literature. It is spoken by over 10 million people worldwide and is one of the two official languages of theRepublic of Haiti.
^MacKay, Ian R. A. “Sounds of North American English.”Phonetics and Speech Science. Cambridge University Press, 2023. p 8.: "Natural human language refers to language that has evolved naturally and is spoken by a group of people we call aspeech community. Th[is] language is the native language of at least a good portion of the speech community. One characteristics of such a language is change through time; despite the efforts of some grammarians, natural language is always in flux, not stable and unchanging".
^Lyons, John (1991).Natural Language and Universal Grammar. Cambridge University Press. pp. 68–70.ISBN978-0521246965.
^Gopsill, F. P., "A historical overview of international languages". InInternational languages: A matter for Interlingua. Sheffield, England: British Interlingua Society, 1990.
