Natural languages

In neuropsychology, linguistics and the philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any language that has evolved naturally in humans through use and repetition without conscious planning or premeditation. Natural languages can take different forms, such as speech, signing, or writing. They are distinguished from constructed and formal languages such as those used to program computers or to study logic.

Though the exact definition varies between scholars, natural language can broadly be defined in contrast to artificial or constructed languages (such as computer programming languages and international auxiliary languages) and to other communication systems in nature. Such examples include bees' waggle dance and whale song, to which researchers have found and/or applied the linguistic cognates of dialect and even syntax.

All language varieties of world languages are natural languages, although some varieties are subject to greater degrees of published prescriptivism and/or language regulation than others. Thus nonstandard dialects can be viewed as a wild type in comparison with standard languages. But even an official language with a regulating academy, such as Standard French with the French Academy, is classified as a natural language (for example, in the field of natural language processing), as its prescriptive points do not make it either constructed enough to be classified as a constructed language or controlled enough to be classified as a controlled natural language.