Chinese is thought to be the first language by most linguists.

English, like Chinese, is a typical tone language.

Tree diagrams of constituent structures best illustrate the hierarchical order of sentences.

Speech and writing came into being at much the same time in the human history.

Suprasegmental features include intonation, stress and tone.

Coordinate construction and subordinate construction make up the two main types of endocentric constructions.

Phonology is a branch of linguistics which studies the sentence patterns of a language.

Langue is relatively stable and systematic while parole is subject to personal and situational constraints.

Language is arbitrary in that there is no intrinsic connection between the word and what the word refers to.

One of the basic differences between animal call systems and human language is that animal call systems are genetically transmitted, while language is culturally transmitted.