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Linguistics - Wikipedia

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(Top)

1Major subdisciplines

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1.1Historical linguistics

1.2Syntax and morphology

1.3Semantics and pragmatics

1.4Phonetics and phonology

1.5Typology

2Structures

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2.1Grammar

2.2Discourse

2.3Lexicon

2.4Style

3Approaches

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3.1Humanistic

3.2Biological

4Methodology

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4.1Sources

4.2Analysis

5History

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5.1Nomenclature

5.2Early grammarians

5.3Comparative philology

5.420th-century developments

6Areas of research

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6.1Sociolinguistics

6.2Developmental linguistics

6.3Neurolinguistics

6.4Applied linguistics

6.5Language documentation

6.6Translation

6.7Clinical linguistics

6.8Computational linguistics

6.9Evolutionary linguistics

6.10Forensic linguistics

7See also

8References

9Bibliography

10External links

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Linguistics

198 languages

AfrikaansAlemannischአማርኛAnarâškielâÆngliscالعربيةAragonésԱրեւմտահայերէնArmãneashtiArpetanঅসমীয়াAsturianuAvañe'ẽAzərbaycancaتۆرکجهBasa BaliBamanankanবাংলাBanjarBân-lâm-gúБашҡортсаБеларускаяБеларуская (тарашкевіца)भोजपुरीBikol CentralБългарскиབོད་ཡིགBosanskiBrezhonegCatalàЧӑвашлаCebuanoČeštinaChiShonaCorsuCymraegDanskDeutschދިވެހިބަސްDolnoserbskiEestiΕλληνικάEspañolEsperantoEstremeñuEuskaraفارسیFiji HindiFøroysktFrançaisFryskFurlanGaeilgeGaelgGàidhligGalegoГӀалгӀай한국어Հայերենहिन्दीHornjoserbsceHrvatskiIdoIlokanoBahasa IndonesiaInterlinguaInterlingueᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ / inuktitutИронÍslenskaItalianoעבריתJawaಕನ್ನಡKapampanganКъарачай-малкъарქართულიKaszëbscziҚазақшаKernowekKiswahiliKotavaKreyòl ayisyenKriyòl gwiyannenKurdîКыргызчаLadinLadinoລາວLatgaļuLatinaLatviešuLëtzebuergeschLietuviųLigureLimburgsLingua Franca NovaLa .lojban.LombardMagyarМакедонскиMalagasyമലയാളംMaltiमराठीმარგალურიمصرىBahasa Melayuꯃꯤꯇꯩ ꯂꯣꯟMinangkabau閩東語 / Mìng-dĕ̤ng-ngṳ̄МокшеньМонголမြန်မာဘာသာNāhuatlNa Vosa VakavitiNederlandsNedersaksiesनेपाली日本語ߒߞߏНохчийнNordfriiskNorfuk / PitkernNorsk bokmålNorsk nynorskNouormandNovialOccitanОлык марийଓଡ଼ିଆOʻzbekcha / ўзбекчаਪੰਜਾਬੀپنجابیပအိုဝ်ႏဘာႏသာႏPapiamentuپښتوភាសាខ្មែរPiemontèisTok PisinPlattdüütschPolskiΠοντιακάPortuguêsRomânăRomani čhibRuna SimiРусиньскыйРусскийСаха тылаसंस्कृतम्ᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲᱤSarduScotsSeediqSeelterskShqipSicilianuසිංහලSimple EnglishسنڌيSlovenčinaSlovenščinaСловѣньскъ / ⰔⰎⰑⰂⰡⰐⰠⰔⰍⰟکوردیСрпски / srpskiSrpskohrvatski / српскохрватскиSundaSuomiSvenskaTagalogதமிழ்TaqbaylitТатарча / tatarçaไทยThuɔŋjäŋТоҷикӣTürkçeTyapУкраїнськаاردوئۇيغۇرچە / UyghurcheVènetoVepsän kel’Tiếng ViệtVõroWalonWayuunaiki文言Winaray吴语ייִדיש粵語ZazakiZeêuwsŽemaitėška中文ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ ⵜⴰⵏⴰⵡⴰⵢⵜ

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scientific study of language

This article is about the field of study. For publications, see Linguistics (disambiguation).

"Linguist" redirects here. For other uses, see Linguist (disambiguation).

Part of a series onLinguistics

OutlineHistoryIndex

General linguistics

Diachronic

Lexicography

Morphology

Phonology

Pragmatics

Semantics

Syntax

Syntax–semantics interface

Typology

Applied linguistics

Acquisition

Anthropological

Applied

Computational

Conversation Analysis

Corpus linguistics

Discourse analysis

Distance

Documentation

Ethnography of communication

Ethnomethodology

Forensic

History of linguistics

Interlinguistics

Neurolinguistics

Philology

Philosophy of language

Phonetics

Psycholinguistics

Sociolinguistics

Text

Translating and interpreting

Writing systems

Theoretical frameworks

Formalist

Constituency

Dependency

Distributionalism

Generative

Glossematics

Functional

Cognitive

Construction grammar

Functional discourse grammar

Grammaticalization

Interactional linguistics

Prague school

Systemic functional

Usage-based

Structuralism

Topics

Autonomy of syntax

Compositionality

Conservative/innovative forms

Descriptivism

Etymology

Iconicity

Internet linguistics

LGBT linguistics

Origin of language

Orthography

Philosophy of linguistics

Prescriptivism

Second-language acquisition

Theory of language

Portalvte

Linguistics is the scientific study of language.[1][2][3] Linguistics is based on a theoretical as well as a descriptive study of language and is also interlinked with the applied fields of language studies and language learning, which entails the study of specific languages. Before the 20th century, linguistics evolved in conjunction with literary study and did not employ scientific methods.[4] Modern-day linguistics is considered a science because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language[4] – i.e., the cognitive, the social, the cultural, the psychological, the environmental, the biological, the literary, the grammatical, the paleographical, and the structural.[5]

Traditional areas of linguistic analysis correspond to syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language), and pragmatics (how social context contributes to meaning).[6] Subdisciplines such as biolinguistics (the study of the biological variables and evolution of language) and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors in human language) bridge many of these divisions.[7]

Linguistics encompasses many branches and subfields that span both theoretical and practical applications.[8] Theoretical linguistics (including traditional descriptive linguistics) is concerned with understanding the universal and fundamental nature of language and developing a general theoretical framework for describing it.[9] Applied linguistics seeks to utilise the scientific findings of the study of language for practical purposes, such as developing methods of improving language education and literacy.[10]

Linguistic features may be studied through a variety of perspectives: synchronically (by describing the shifts in a language at a certain specific point of time) or diachronically (through the historical development of language over several periods of time), in monolinguals or in multilinguals, amongst children or amongst adults, in terms of how it is being learned or how it was acquired, as abstract objects or as cognitive structures, through written texts or through oral elicitation, and finally through mechanical data collection or through practical fieldwork.[11]

Linguistics emerged from the field of philology, of which some branches are more qualitative and holistic in approach.[4] Today, philology and linguistics are now variably described as related fields, subdisciplines, or separate fields of language study but, by and large, linguistics can be seen as an umbrella term.[12] Linguistics is also related to the philosophy of language, stylistics, rhetoric, semiotics, lexicography, and translation.

Major subdisciplines[edit]

Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure is regarded as the creator of semiotics

Historical linguistics[edit]

Main article: Historical linguistics

Historical linguistics is the study of how language changes in history, particularly with regard to a specific language or a group of languages. Western trends in historical linguistics date back to roughly the late 18th century, when the discipline grew out of philology, the study of ancient texts and oral traditions.[13]

Historical linguistics emerged as one of the first few sub-disciplines in the field, and was most widely practised during the late 19th century.[14] Despite a shift in focus in the 20th century towards formalism and generative grammar, which studies the universal properties of language, historical research today still remains a significant field of linguistic inquiry. Subfields of the discipline include language change and grammaticalisation.[15]

Historical linguistics studies language change either diachronically (through a comparison of different time periods in the past and present) or in a synchronic manner (by observing developments between different variations that exist within the current linguistic stage of a language).[16]

At first, historical linguistics was the cornerstone of comparative linguistics, which involves a study of the relationship between different languages.[17] At that time, scholars of historical linguistics were only concerned with creating different categories of language families, and reconstructing prehistoric proto-languages by using both the comparative method and the method of internal reconstruction. Internal reconstruction is the method by which an element that contains a certain meaning is re-used in different contexts or environments where there is a variation in either sound or analogy.[17][better source needed]

The reason for this had been to describe well-known Indo-European languages, many of which had long written histories. Scholars of historical linguistics also studied Uralic languages, another European language family for which very little written material existed back then. After that, there also followed significant work on the corpora of other languages, such as the Austronesian languages and the Native American language families.

The above approach of comparativism in linguistics is now, however, only a small part of the much broader discipline called historical linguistics. The comparative study of specific Indo-European languages is considered a highly specialised field today, while comparative research is carried out over the subsequent internal developments in a language: in particular, over the development of modern standard varieties of languages, and over the development of a language from its standardized form to its varieties.[16]

For instance, some scholars also tried to establish super-families, linking, for example, Indo-European, Uralic, and other language families to Nostratic.[18] While these attempts are still not widely accepted as credible methods, they provide necessary information to establish relatedness in language change. This is generally hard to find for events long ago, due to the occurrence of chance word resemblances and variations between language groups. A limit of around 10,000 years is often assumed for the functional purpose of conducting research.[19] It is also hard to date various proto-languages. Even though several methods are available, these languages can be dated only approximately.[20]

In modern historical linguistics, we examine how languages change over time, focusing on the relationships between dialects within a specific period. This includes studying morphological, syntactical, and phonetic shifts. Connections between dialects in the past and present are also explored.[21]

Syntax and morphology[edit]

Main articles: Syntax and Morphology (linguistics)

Syntax and morphology are branches of linguistics concerned with the order and structure of meaningful linguistic units such as words and morphemes. Syntacticians study the rules and constraints that govern how speakers of a language can organize words into sentences. Morphologists study similar rules for the order of morphemes—sub-word units such as prefixes and suffixes—and how they may be combined to form words.[21]

Words, along with clitics, are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax. But in most languages, if not all, many words can be related to other words by rules that collectively describe the grammar for that language. For example, English speakers recognize that the words dog and dogs are closely related, differentiated only by the plurality morpheme "-s", only found bound to noun phrases. Speakers of English recognize these relations from their innate knowledge of the English language's rules of word formation. They infer intuitively that dog is to dogs as cat is to cats; and, in similar fashion, dog is to dog catcher as dish is to dishwasher. By contrast, Classical Chinese has very little morphology, using almost exclusively unbound morphemes ("free" morphemes) and depending on word order to convey meaning. (Most words in modern Standard Chinese ["Mandarin"], however, are compounds and most roots are bound.) These are understood as grammars that represent the morphology of the language. The rules understood by a speaker reflect specific patterns or regularities in the way words are formed from smaller units in the language they are using, and how those smaller units interact in speech. In this way, morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies patterns of word formation within and across languages and attempts to formulate rules that model the knowledge of the speakers of those languages.[22]

Changes in sound and spelling between a base word and its origin[clarification needed] may be partial to[clarification needed] literacy skills. Studies show that the presence of modification in phonology and orthography makes morphologically complex words harder to understand and that the absence of modification between a base word and its origin makes morphologically complex words easier to understand. Morphologically complex words are easier to comprehend when they include a base word.[23]

Polysynthetic languages, such as Chukchi, have words composed of many morphemes. The Chukchi word "təmeyŋəlevtpəγtərkən", for example, meaning "I have a fierce headache", is composed of eight morphemes t-ə-meyŋ-ə-levt-pəγt-ə-rkən that may be glossed. The morphology of such languages allows for each consonant and vowel to be understood as morphemes, while the grammar of the language indicates the usage and understanding of each morpheme.[citation needed]

The discipline that deals specifically with the sound changes occurring within morphemes is morphophonology.[24]

Semantics and pragmatics[edit]

Main articles: Formal semantics (linguistics), Cognitive semantics, and Pragmatics

Semantics and pragmatics are branches of linguistics concerned with meaning. These subfields have traditionally been divided according to aspects of meaning: "semantics" refers to grammatical and lexical meanings, while "pragmatics" is concerned with meaning in context. The framework of formal semantics studies the denotations[clarification needed] of sentences and how they are composed from the meanings of their constituent expressions. Formal semantics draws heavily on philosophy of language and uses formal tools from logic and computer science. Cognitive semantics ties linguistic meaning to general aspects of cognition, drawing on ideas from cognitive science such as prototype theory.

Pragmatics includes features like speech acts, implicature, and talk in interaction.[25] Unlike semantics, which examines meaning that is conventional or "coded" in a given language, pragmatics studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on the structural and linguistic knowledge (grammar, lexicon, etc.) of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance,[26] any pre-existing knowledge about those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, and other factors.[27] In that respect, pragmatics explains how language users can overcome apparent ambiguity since meaning relies on the manner, place, time, etc. of an utterance.[25][28]

Phonetics and phonology[edit]

Main articles: Phonetics and Phonology

Phonetics and phonology are branches of linguistics concerned with sounds (or the equivalent aspects of sign languages). Phonetics is largely concerned with the physical aspects of sounds such as their articulation, acoustics, production, and perception. Phonology is concerned with the linguistic abstractions and categorizations of sounds, and it tells us what sounds are in a language, how they do and can combine into words, and explains why certain phonetic features are important to identifying a word.[29]

Typology[edit]

This paragraph is an excerpt from Linguistic typology.[edit]

Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the common properties of the world's languages.[30] Its subdisciplines include, but are not limited to phonological typology, which deals with sound features; syntactic typology, which deals with word order and form; lexical typology, which deals with language vocabulary; and theoretical typology, which aims to explain the universal tendencies.[31]

Structures[edit]

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Linguistic structures are pairings of meaning and form. Any particular pairing of meaning and form is a Saussurean linguistic sign. For instance, the meaning "cat" is represented worldwide with a wide variety of different sound patterns (in oral languages), movements of the hands and face (in sign languages), and written symbols (in written languages). Linguistic patterns have proven their importance for the knowledge engineering field especially with the ever-increasing amount of available data.

Linguists focusing on structure attempt to understand the rules regarding language use that native speakers know (not always consciously). All linguistic structures can be broken down into component parts that are combined according to (sub)conscious rules, over multiple levels of analysis. For instance, consider the structure of the word "tenth" on two different levels of analysis. On the level of internal word structure (known as morphology), the word "tenth" is made up of one linguistic form indicating a number and another form indicating ordinality. The rule governing the combination of these forms ensures that the ordinality marker "th" follows the number "ten." On the level of sound structure (known as phonology), structural analysis shows that the "n" sound in "tenth" is made differently from the "n" sound in "ten" spoken alone. Although most speakers of English are consciously aware of the rules governing internal structure of the word pieces of "tenth", they are less often aware of the rule governing its sound structure. Linguists focused on structure find and analyze rules such as these, which govern how native speakers use language.

Grammar[edit]

Grammar is a system of rules which governs the production and use of utterances in a given language. These rules apply to sound[32] as well as meaning, and include componential subsets of rules, such as those pertaining to phonology (the organisation of phonetic sound systems), morphology (the formation and composition of words), and syntax (the formation and composition of phrases and sentences).[6] Modern frameworks that deal with the principles of grammar include structural and functional linguistics, and generative linguistics.[33]

Sub-fields that focus on a grammatical study of language include the following:

Phonetics, the study of the physical properties of speech sound production and perception, and delves into their acoustic and articulatory properties

Phonology, the study of sounds as abstract elements in the speaker's mind that distinguish meaning (phonemes)

Morphology, the study of morphemes, or the internal structures of words and how they can be modified

Syntax, the study of how words combine to form grammatical phrases and sentences

Semantics, the study of lexical and grammatical aspects of meaning[34]

Pragmatics, the study of how utterances are used in communicative acts, and the role played by situational context and non-linguistic knowledge in the transmission of meaning[34]

Discourse analysis, the analysis of language use in texts (spoken, written, or signed)

Stylistics, the study of linguistic factors (rhetoric, diction, stress) that place a discourse in context

Semiotics, the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication

Discourse[edit]

Discourse is language as social practice (Baynham, 1995) and is a multilayered concept. As a social practice, discourse embodies different ideologies through written and spoken texts. Discourse analysis can examine or expose these ideologies. Discourse influences genre, which is chosen in response to different situations and finally, at micro level, discourse influences language as text (spoken or written) at the phonological or lexico-grammatical level. Grammar and discourse are linked as parts of a system.[35] A particular discourse becomes a language variety when it is used in this way for a particular purpose, and is referred to as a register.[36] There may be certain lexical additions (new words) that are brought into play because of the expertise of the community of people within a certain domain of specialization. Registers and discourses therefore differentiate themselves through the use of vocabulary, and at times through the use of style too. People in the medical fraternity, for example, may use some medical terminology in their communication that is specialized to the field of medicine. This is often referred to as being part of the "medical discourse", and so on.

Lexicon[edit]

The lexicon is a catalogue of words and terms that are stored in a speaker's mind. The lexicon consists of words and bound morphemes, which are parts of words that can not stand alone, like affixes. In some analyses, compound words and certain classes of idiomatic expressions and other collocations are also considered to be part of the lexicon. Dictionaries represent attempts at listing, in alphabetical order, the lexicon of a given language; usually, however, bound morphemes are not included. Lexicography, closely linked with the domain of semantics, is the science of mapping the words into an encyclopedia or a dictionary. The creation and addition of new words (into the lexicon) is called coining or neologization,[37] and the new words are called neologisms.

It is often believed that a speaker's capacity for language lies in the quantity of words stored in the lexicon. However, this is often considered a myth by linguists. The capacity for the use of language is considered by many linguists to lie primarily in the domain of grammar, and to be linked with competence, rather than with the growth of vocabulary. Even a very small lexicon is theoretically capable of producing an infinite number of sentences.

Style[edit]

Stylistics also involves the study of written, signed, or spoken discourse through varying speech communities, genres, and editorial or narrative formats in the mass media.[38] It involves the study and interpretation of texts for aspects of their linguistic and tonal style. Stylistic analysis entails the analysis of description of particular dialects and registers used by speech communities. Stylistic features include rhetoric,[39] diction, stress, satire, irony, dialogue, and other forms of phonetic variations. Stylistic analysis can also include the study of language in canonical works of literature, popular fiction, news, advertisements, and other forms of communication in popular culture as well. It is usually seen as a variation in communication that changes from speaker to speaker and community to community. In short, Stylistics is the interpretation of text.

In the 1960s, Jacques Derrida, for instance, further distinguished between speech and writing, by proposing that written language be studied as a linguistic medium of communication in itself.[40] Palaeography is therefore the discipline that studies the evolution of written scripts (as signs and symbols) in language.[41] The formal study of language also led to the growth of fields like psycholinguistics, which explores the representation and function of language in the mind; neurolinguistics, which studies language processing in the brain; biolinguistics, which studies the biology and evolution of language; and language acquisition, which investigates how children and adults acquire the knowledge of one or more languages.

Approaches[edit]

See also: Theory of language

Humanistic[edit]

The fundamental principle of humanistic linguistics, especially rational and logical grammar, is that language is an invention created by people. A semiotic tradition of linguistic research considers language a sign system which arises from the interaction of meaning and form.[42] The organisation of linguistic levels is considered computational.[43] Linguistics is essentially seen as relating to social and cultural studies because different languages are shaped in social interaction by the speech community.[44] Frameworks representing the humanistic view of language include structural linguistics, among others.[45]

Structural analysis means dissecting each linguistic level: phonetic, morphological, syntactic, and discourse, to the smallest units. These are collected into inventories (e.g. phoneme, morpheme, lexical classes, phrase types) to study their interconnectedness within a hierarchy of structures and layers.[46] Functional analysis adds to structural analysis the assignment of semantic and other functional roles that each unit may have. For example, a noun phrase may function as the subject or object of the sentence; or the agent or patient.[47]

Functional linguistics, or functional grammar, is a branch of structural linguistics. In the humanistic reference, the terms structuralism and functionalism are related to their meaning in other human sciences. The difference between formal and functional structuralism lies in the way that the two approaches explain why languages have the properties they have. Functional explanation entails the idea that language is a tool for communication, or that communication is the primary function of language. Linguistic forms are consequently explained by an appeal to their functional value, or usefulness. Other structuralist approaches take the perspective that form follows from the inner mechanisms of the bilateral and multilayered language system.[48]

Biological[edit]

Further information: Biolinguistics and Biosemiotics

Approaches such as cognitive linguistics and generative grammar study linguistic cognition with a view towards uncovering the biological underpinnings of language. In Generative Grammar, these underpinning are understood as including innate domain-specific grammatical knowledge. Thus, one of the central concerns of the approach is to discover what aspects of linguistic knowledge are innate and which are not.[49][50]

Cognitive linguistics, in contrast, rejects the notion of innate grammar, and studies how the human mind creates linguistic constructions from event schemas,[51] and the impact of cognitive constraints and biases on human language.[52] In cognitive linguistics, language is approached via the senses.[53][54]

A closely related approach is evolutionary linguistics[55] which includes the study of linguistic units as cultural replicators.[56][57] It is possible to study how language replicates and adapts to the mind of the individual or the speech community.[58][59] Construction grammar is a framework which applies the meme concept to the study of syntax.[60][61][62][63]

The generative versus evolutionary approach are sometimes called formalism and functionalism, respectively.[64] This reference is however different from the use of the terms in human sciences.[65]

Methodology[edit]

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Modern linguistics is primarily descriptive.[66] Linguists describe and explain features of language without making subjective judgments on whether a particular feature or usage is "good" or "bad". This is analogous to practice in other sciences: a zoologist studies the animal kingdom without making subjective judgments on whether a particular species is "better" or "worse" than another.[67]

Prescription, on the other hand, is an attempt to promote particular linguistic usages over others, often favouring a particular dialect or "acrolect". This may have the aim of establishing a linguistic standard, which can aid communication over large geographical areas. It may also, however, be an attempt by speakers of one language or dialect to exert influence over speakers of other languages or dialects (see Linguistic imperialism). An extreme version of prescriptivism can be found among censors, who attempt to eradicate words and structures that they consider to be destructive to society. Prescription, however, may be practised appropriately in language instruction, like in ELT, where certain fundamental grammatical rules and lexical items need to be introduced to a second-language speaker who is attempting to acquire the language.[citation needed]

Sources[edit]

Most contemporary linguists work under the assumption that spoken data and signed data are more fundamental than written data. This is because

Speech appears to be universal to all human beings capable of producing and perceiving it, while there have been many cultures and speech communities that lack written communication;

Features appear in speech which are not always recorded in writing, including phonological rules, sound changes, and speech errors;

All natural writing systems reflect a spoken language (or potentially a signed one), even with pictographic scripts like Dongba writing Naxi homophones with the same pictogram, and text in writing systems used for two languages changing to fit the spoken language being recorded;

Speech evolved before human beings invented writing;

Individuals learn to speak and process spoken language more easily and earlier than they do with writing.

Nonetheless, linguists agree that the study of written language can be worthwhile and valuable. For research that relies on corpus linguistics and computational linguistics, written language is often much more convenient for processing large amounts of linguistic data. Large corpora of spoken language are difficult to create and hard to find, and are typically transcribed and written. In addition, linguists have turned to text-based discourse occurring in various formats of computer-mediated communication as a viable site for linguistic inquiry.

The study of writing systems themselves, graphemics, is, in any case, considered a branch of linguistics.

Analysis[edit]

Before the 20th century, linguists analysed language on a diachronic plane, which was historical in focus. This meant that they would compare linguistic features and try to analyse language from the point of view of how it had changed between then and later. However, with the rise of Saussurean linguistics in the 20th century, the focus shifted to a more synchronic approach, where the study was geared towards analysis and comparison between different language variations, which existed at the same given point of time.

At another level, the syntagmatic plane of linguistic analysis entails the comparison between the way words are sequenced, within the syntax of a sentence. For example, the article "the" is followed by a noun, because of the syntagmatic relation between the words. The paradigmatic plane, on the other hand, focuses on an analysis that is based on the paradigms or concepts that are embedded in a given text. In this case, words of the same type or class may be replaced in the text with each other to achieve the same conceptual understanding.

History[edit]

Main article: History of linguistics

The earliest activities in the description of language have been attributed to the 6th-century-BC Indian grammarian Pāṇini[68][69] who wrote a formal description of the Sanskrit language in his Aṣṭādhyāyī.[70][71] Today, modern-day theories on grammar employ many of the principles that were laid down then.[72]

Nomenclature[edit]

Before the 20th century, the term philology, first attested in 1716,[73] was commonly used to refer to the study of language, which was then predominantly historical in focus.[74][75] Since Ferdinand de Saussure's insistence on the importance of synchronic analysis, however, this focus has shifted[75] and the term philology is now generally used for the "study of a language's grammar, history, and literary tradition", especially in the United States[76] (where philology has never been very popularly considered as the "science of language").[73]

Although the term linguist in the sense of "a student of language" dates from 1641,[77] the term linguistics is first attested in 1847.[77] It is now the usual term in English for the scientific study of language,[78][79] though linguistic science is sometimes used.

Linguistics is a multi-disciplinary field of research that combines tools from natural sciences, social sciences, formal sciences, and the humanities.[80][81][82][83] Many linguists, such as David Crystal, conceptualize the field as being primarily scientific.[84] The term linguist applies to someone who studies language or is a researcher within the field, or to someone who uses the tools of the discipline to describe and analyse specific languages.[85]

Early grammarians[edit]

Further information: Philology and Grammarian (Greco-Roman)

An early formal study of language was in India with Pāṇini, the 6th century BC grammarian who formulated 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology. Pāṇini's systematic classification of the sounds of Sanskrit into consonants and vowels, and word classes, such as nouns and verbs, was the first known instance of its kind. In the Middle East, Sibawayh, a Persian, made a detailed description of Arabic in AD 760 in his monumental work, Al-kitab fii an-naħw (الكتاب في النحو, The Book on Grammar), the first known author to distinguish between sounds and phonemes (sounds as units of a linguistic system). Western interest in the study of languages began somewhat later than in the East,[86] but the grammarians of the classical languages did not use the same methods or reach the same conclusions as their contemporaries in the Indic world. Early interest in language in the West was a part of philosophy, not of grammatical description. The first insights into semantic theory were made by Plato in his Cratylus dialogue, where he argues that words denote concepts that are eternal and exist in the world of ideas. This work is the first to use the word etymology to describe the history of a word's meaning. Around 280 BC, one of Alexander the Great's successors founded a university (see Musaeum) in Alexandria, where a school of philologists studied the ancient texts in Greek, and taught Greek to speakers of other languages. While this school was the first to use the word "grammar" in its modern sense, Plato had used the word in its original meaning as "téchnē grammatikḗ" (Τέχνη Γραμματική), the "art of writing", which is also the title of one of the most important works of the Alexandrine school by Dionysius Thrax.[87] Throughout the Middle Ages, the study of language was subsumed under the topic of philology, the study of ancient languages and texts, practised by such educators as Roger Ascham, Wolfgang Ratke, and John Amos Comenius.[88]

Comparative philology[edit]

In the 18th century, the first use of the comparative method by William Jones sparked the rise of comparative linguistics.[89] Bloomfield attributes "the first great scientific linguistic work of the world" to Jacob Grimm, who wrote Deutsche Grammatik.[90] It was soon followed by other authors writing similar comparative studies on other language groups of Europe. The study of language was broadened from Indo-European to language in general by Wilhelm von Humboldt, of whom Bloomfield asserts:[90]

This study received its foundation at the hands of the Prussian statesman and scholar Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), especially in the first volume of his work on Kavi, the literary language of Java, entitled Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluß auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts (On the Variety of the Structure of Human Language and its Influence upon the Mental Development of the Human Race).

20th-century developments[edit]

There was a shift of focus from historical and comparative linguistics to synchronic analysis in early 20th century. Structural analysis was improved by Leonard Bloomfield, Louis Hjelmslev; and Zellig Harris who also developed methods of discourse analysis. Functional analysis was developed by the Prague linguistic circle and André Martinet. As sound recording devices became commonplace in the 1960s, dialectal recordings were made and archived, and the audio-lingual method provided a technological solution to foreign language learning. The 1960s also saw a new rise of comparative linguistics: the study of language universals in linguistic typology. Towards the end of the century the field of linguistics became divided into further areas of interest with the advent of language technology and digitalised corpora.[91][92][93]

Areas of research[edit]

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Sociolinguistics[edit]

Main article: Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics is the study of how language is shaped by social factors. This sub-discipline focuses on the synchronic approach of linguistics, and looks at how a language in general, or a set of languages, display variation and varieties at a given point in time. The study of language variation and the different varieties of language through dialects, registers, and idiolects can be tackled through a study of style, as well as through analysis of discourse. Sociolinguists research both style and discourse in language, as well as the theoretical factors that are at play between language and society.

Developmental linguistics[edit]

Main article: Developmental linguistics

Developmental linguistics is the study of the development of linguistic ability in individuals, particularly the acquisition of language in childhood. Some of the questions that developmental linguistics looks into are how children acquire different languages, how adults can acquire a second language, and what the process of language acquisition is.[94]

Neurolinguistics[edit]

Main article: Neurolinguistics

Neurolinguistics is the study of the structures in the human brain that underlie grammar and communication. Researchers are drawn to the field from a variety of backgrounds, bringing along a variety of experimental techniques as well as widely varying theoretical perspectives. Much work in neurolinguistics is informed by models in psycholinguistics and theoretical linguistics, and is focused on investigating how the brain can implement the processes that theoretical and psycholinguistics propose are necessary in producing and comprehending language. Neurolinguists study the physiological mechanisms by which the brain processes information related to language, and evaluate linguistic and psycholinguistic theories, using aphasiology, brain imaging, electrophysiology, and computer modelling. Amongst the structures of the brain involved in the mechanisms of neurolinguistics, the cerebellum which contains the highest numbers of neurons has a major role in terms of predictions required to produce language.[95]

Applied linguistics[edit]

Main article: Applied linguistics

Linguists are largely concerned with finding and describing the generalities and varieties both within particular languages and among all languages. Applied linguistics takes the results of those findings and "applies" them to other areas. Linguistic research is commonly applied to areas such as language education, lexicography, translation, language planning, which involves governmental policy implementation related to language use, and natural language processing. "Applied linguistics" has been argued to be something of a misnomer.[96] Applied linguists actually focus on making sense of and engineering solutions for real-world linguistic problems, and not literally "applying" existing technical knowledge from linguistics. Moreover, they commonly apply technical knowledge from multiple sources, such as sociology (e.g., conversation analysis) and anthropology. (Constructed language fits under Applied linguistics.)

Today, computers are widely used in many areas of applied linguistics. Speech synthesis and speech recognition use phonetic and phonemic knowledge to provide voice interfaces to computers. Applications of computational linguistics in machine translation, computer-assisted translation, and natural language processing are areas of applied linguistics that have come to the forefront. Their influence has had an effect on theories of syntax and semantics, as modelling syntactic and semantic theories on computers constraints.

Linguistic analysis is a sub-discipline of applied linguistics used by many governments to verify the claimed nationality of people seeking asylum who do not hold the necessary documentation to prove their claim.[97] This often takes the form of an interview by personnel in an immigration department. Depending on the country, this interview is conducted either in the asylum seeker's native language through an interpreter or in an international lingua franca like English.[97] Australia uses the former method, while Germany employs the latter; the Netherlands uses either method depending on the languages involved.[97] Tape recordings of the interview then undergo language analysis, which can be done either by private contractors or within a department of the government. In this analysis, linguistic features of the asylum seeker are used by analysts to make a determination about the speaker's nationality. The reported findings of the linguistic analysis can play a critical role in the government's decision on the refugee status of the asylum seeker.[97]

Language documentation[edit]

Language documentation combines anthropological inquiry (into the history and culture of language) with linguistic inquiry, in order to describe languages and their grammars. Lexicography involves the documentation of words that form a vocabulary. Such a documentation of a linguistic vocabulary from a particular language is usually compiled in a dictionary. Computational linguistics is concerned with the statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective. Specific knowledge of language is applied by speakers during the act of translation and interpretation, as well as in language education – the teaching of a second or foreign language. Policy makers work with governments to implement new plans in education and teaching which are based on linguistic research.

Since the inception of the discipline of linguistics, linguists have been concerned with describing and analysing previously undocumented languages. Starting with Franz Boas in the early 1900s, this became the main focus of American linguistics until the rise of formal linguistics in the mid-20th century. This focus on language documentation was partly motivated by a concern to document the rapidly disappearing languages of indigenous peoples. The ethnographic dimension of the Boasian approach to language description played a role in the development of disciplines such as sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, and linguistic anthropology, which investigate the relations between language, culture, and society.

The emphasis on linguistic description and documentation has also gained prominence outside North America, with the documentation of rapidly dying indigenous languages becoming a focus in some university programmes in linguistics. Language description is a work-intensive endeavour, usually requiring years of field work in the language concerned, so as to equip the linguist to write a sufficiently accurate reference grammar. Further, the task of documentation requires the linguist to collect a substantial corpus in the language in question, consisting of texts and recordings, both sound and video, which can be stored in an accessible format within open repositories, and used for further research.[98]

Translation[edit]

Main articles: Translation and Translation studies

The sub-field of translation includes the translation of written and spoken texts across media, from digital to print and spoken. To translate literally means to transmute the meaning from one language into another. Translators are often employed by organizations such as travel agencies and governmental embassies to facilitate communication between two speakers who do not know each other's language. Translators are also employed to work within computational linguistics setups like Google Translate, which is an automated program to translate words and phrases between any two or more given languages. Translation is also conducted by publishing houses, which convert works of writing from one language to another in order to reach varied audiences. Cross-national and cross-cultural survey research studies employ translation to collect comparable data among multilingual populations.[99][100] Academic translators specialize in or are familiar with various other disciplines such as technology, science, law, economics, etc.

Clinical linguistics[edit]

Main article: Clinical linguistics

Clinical linguistics is the application of linguistic theory to the field of speech-language pathology. Speech language pathologists work on corrective measures to treat communication and swallowing disorders.

Computational linguistics[edit]

Main article: Computational linguistics

Computational linguistics is the study of linguistic issues in a way that is "computationally responsible", i.e., taking careful note of computational consideration of algorithmic specification and computational complexity, so that the linguistic theories devised can be shown to exhibit certain desirable computational properties and their implementations. Computational linguists also work on computer language and software development.

Evolutionary linguistics[edit]

Main article: Evolutionary linguistics

Evolutionary linguistics is a sociobiological approach to analyzing the emergence of the language faculty through human evolution, and also the application of evolutionary theory to the study of cultural evolution among different languages. It is also a study of the dispersal of various languages across the globe, through movements among ancient communities.[101]

Forensic linguistics[edit]

Main article: Forensic linguistics

Forensic linguistics is the application of linguistic analysis to forensics. Forensic analysis investigates the style, language, lexical use, and other linguistic and grammatical features used in the legal context to provide evidence in courts of law. Forensic linguists have also used their expertise in the framework of criminal cases.[102][103]

See also[edit]

Linguistics portalLanguage portal

Articulatory synthesis – computational techniques for synthesizing speech based on models of human articulation processesPages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback

Axiom of categoricity – linguistic tenet that linguistic data should be removed/abstracted from all real-world context so as to be free of any inconsistencies or variabilityPages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback

Critical discourse analysis – Interdisciplinary approach to study discourse

Cryptanalysis – Study of analyzing information systems in order to discover their hidden aspects

Decipherment – Rediscovery of a language or script's meaning

Global language system – Connections between language groups

Hermeneutics – Theory and methodology of text interpretation

Integrational linguistics – Theory of language

Integrationism – Approach in the theory of communication

Interlinguistics – Subfield of linguistics

Language engineering – Creation of language processing systems

Language geography – branch of human geography that studies the geographic distribution of language(s) or its constituent elementsPages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback

Linguistic rights – Right to choose one's own language

Metalinguistics – study of the relations between language and culturePages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback

Metacommunicative competence – secondary communication (including indirect cues) about how a piece of information is meant to be interpretedPages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback

Microlinguistics – Branch of linguistics

Onomastics – Study of proper names of all kinds and the origins of names

Reading – Taking in the meaning of letters or symbols

Speech processing – Study of speech signals and the processing methods of these signals

Stratificational linguistics – Theory of language usage and production

Outline and lists

Index of linguistics articles

List of departments of linguistics

List of summer schools of linguistics

List of schools of linguistics

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^ Crystal, David (1990). Linguistics. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-013531-2.

^ "Linguist". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2000. ISBN 978-0-395-82517-4.

^ Bloomfield 1983, p. 307.

^ Seuren, Pieter A. M. (1998). Western linguistics: An historical introduction. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 2–24. ISBN 978-0-631-20891-4.

^ Bloomfield 1983, p. 308.

^ Bloomfield 1983, p. 310.

^ a b Bloomfield 1983, p. 311.

^ Jensen, Kim Ebensgaard (19 December 2014). "Linguistics in the digital humanities: (computational) corpus linguistics". Mediekultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research. 30 (57). doi:10.7146/mediekultur.v30i57.15968. Retrieved 10 December 2023.

^ McEnery, Tony (2019). "Corpus Linguistics, Learner Corpora, and SLA: Employing Technology to Analyze Language Use". Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. Cambridge University Press. 39: 74–92. doi:10.1017/S0267190519000096. Retrieved 10 December 2023.

^ Hunston, S. (1 January 2006), "Corpus Linguistics", in Brown, Keith (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (Second Edition), Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 234–248, doi:10.1016/b0-08-044854-2/00944-5, ISBN 978-0-08-044854-1, retrieved 31 October 2023

^ Bailey, Charles-James N. (1 January 1981). "DEVELOPMENTAL LINGUISTICS". 15 (1–2): 29–38. doi:10.1515/flin.1981.15.1-2.29. ISSN 1614-7308. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

^ Mariën, Peter; Manto, Mario (25 October 2017). "Cerebellum as a Master-Piece for Linguistic Predictability". Cerebellum (London, England). 17 (2): 101–03. doi:10.1007/s12311-017-0894-1. ISSN 1473-4230. PMID 29071518.

^ Barbara Seidlhofer (2003). Controversies in Applied Linguistics (pp. 288). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-437444-6.

^ a b c d Eades, Diana (2005). "Applied Linguistics and Language Analysis in Asylum Seeker Cases" (PDF). Applied Linguistics. 26 (4): 503–26. doi:10.1093/applin/ami021. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 March 2009. Retrieved 31 January 2009.

^ Himmelman, Nikolaus "Language documentation: What is it and what is it good for?" in P. Gippert, Jost, Nikolaus P Himmelmann & Ulrike Mosel. (2006) Essentials of Language documentation. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin & New York.

^ Behr, Dorothée; Sha, Mandy (25 July 2018). "Introduction: Translation of questionnaires in cross-national and cross-cultural research". Translation & Interpreting. 10 (2): 1–4. doi:10.12807/ti.110202.2018.a01. ISSN 1836-9324.

^ Pan, Yuling; Sha, Mandy (9 July 2019). The Sociolinguistics of Survey Translation. London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429294914. ISBN 978-0-429-29491-4. S2CID 198632812.

^ Croft, William (October 2008). "Evolutionary Linguistics". Annual Review of Anthropology. 37: 219–34. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.37.081407.085156.

^ Olsson, John. "What is Forensic Linguistics?" (PDF). Forensic Linguistics Intelligence.

^ "what is forensic linguistics?". CFL at Aston University. Archived from the original on 27 September 2010. Retrieved 1 February 2024.

Bibliography[edit]

Akmajian, Adrian; Demers, Richard; Farmer, Ann; Harnish, Robert (2010). Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-51370-8.

Aronoff, Mark; Rees-Miller, Janie, eds. (2000). The handbook of linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.

Bloomfield, Leonard (1983) [1914]. An Introduction to the Study of Language (New ed.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN 978-90-272-8047-3.

Chomsky, Noam (1998). On Language. The New Press, New York. ISBN 978-1-56584-475-9.

Crystal, David (1990). Linguistics. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-013531-2.

Derrida, Jacques (1967). Of Grammatology. The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-5830-7.

Hall, Christopher (2005). An Introduction to Language and Linguistics: Breaking the Language Spell. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-8264-8734-6.

Isac, Daniela; Charles Reiss (2013). I-language: An Introduction to Linguistics as Cognitive Science (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-966017-9. Archived from the original on 6 July 2011. Retrieved 17 May 2013.

Pinker, Steven (1994). The Language Instinct. William Morrow and Company. ISBN 978-0-14-017529-5.

External links[edit]

Library resources about Linguistics

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The Linguist List, a global online linguistics community with news and information updated daily

Glossary of linguistic terms Archived 10 February 2013 at the Wayback Machine by SIL International (last updated 2004)

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Linguistics and language-related wiki articles on Scholarpedia and Citizendium

"Linguistics" section – A Bibliography of Literary Theory, Criticism and Philology, ed. J.A. García Landa (University of Zaragoza, Spain)

Isac, Daniela; Charles Reiss (2013). I-language: An Introduction to Linguistics as Cognitive Science (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-953420-3.

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linguistics

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IntroductionHistory of linguisticsEarlier historyNon-Western traditionsGreek and Roman antiquityThe European Middle AgesThe RenaissanceThe 19th centuryDevelopment of the comparative methodThe role of analogyOther 19th-century theories and developmentInner and outer formPhonetics and dialectologyThe 20th centuryStructuralismStructural linguistics in EuropeStructural linguistics in AmericaTransformational-generative grammarTagmemic, stratificational, and other approachesMethods of synchronic linguistic analysisStructural linguisticsPhonologyMorphologySyntaxSemanticsTransformational-generative grammarHarris’s grammarChomsky’s grammarModifications in Chomsky’s grammarTagmemicsModes of languageHierarchy of levelsStratificational grammarTechnical terminologyInterstratal relationshipsThe Prague schoolCombination of structuralism and functionalismPhonological contributionsTheory of markednessLater contributionsHistorical (diachronic) linguisticsLinguistic changeSound changeGrammatical changeSemantic changeBorrowingThe comparative methodGrimm’s lawProto-Indo-European reconstructionSteps in the comparative methodCriticisms of the comparative methodInternal reconstructionLanguage classificationLinguistics and other disciplinesPsycholinguisticsLanguage acquisition by childrenSpeech perceptionOther areas of researchSociolinguisticsDelineation of the fieldSocial dimensionsOther relationshipsAnthropological linguisticsComputational linguisticsMathematical linguisticsStylisticsApplied linguisticsDialectology and linguistic geographyDialect geographyEarly dialect studiesDialect atlasesThe value and applications of dialectologySocial dialectology

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linguistics, the scientific study of language. The word was first used in the middle of the 19th century to emphasize the difference between a newer approach to the study of language that was then developing and the more traditional approach of philology. The differences were and are largely matters of attitude, emphasis, and purpose. The philologist is concerned primarily with the historical development of languages as it is manifest in written texts and in the context of the associated literature and culture. The linguist, though he may be interested in written texts and in the development of languages through time, tends to give priority to spoken languages and to the problems of analyzing them as they operate at a given point in time.The field of linguistics may be divided in terms of three dichotomies: synchronic versus diachronic, theoretical versus applied, and microlinguistics versus macrolinguistics. A synchronic description of a language describes the language as it is at a given time; a diachronic description is concerned with the historical development of the language and the structural changes that have taken place in it. The goal of theoretical linguistics is the construction of a general theory of the structure of language or of a general theoretical framework for the description of languages; the aim of applied linguistics is the application of the findings and techniques of the scientific study of language to practical tasks, especially to the elaboration of improved methods of language teaching. The terms microlinguistics and macrolinguistics are not yet well established, and they are, in fact, used here purely for convenience. The former refers to a narrower and the latter to a much broader view of the scope of linguistics. According to the microlinguistic view, languages should be analyzed for their own sake and without reference to their social function, to the manner in which they are acquired by children, to the psychological mechanisms that underlie the production and reception of speech, to the literary and the aesthetic or communicative function of language, and so on. In contrast, macrolinguistics embraces all of these aspects of language. Various areas within macrolinguistics have been given terminological recognition: psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, dialectology, mathematical and computational linguistics, and stylistics. Macrolinguistics should not be identified with applied linguistics. The application of linguistic methods and concepts to language teaching may well involve other disciplines in a way that microlinguistics does not. But there is, in principle, a theoretical aspect to every part of macrolinguistics, no less than to microlinguistics.A large portion of this article is devoted to theoretical, synchronic microlinguistics, which is generally acknowledged as the central part of the subject; it will be abbreviated henceforth as theoretical linguistics. History of linguistics Earlier history Non-Western traditions Linguistic speculation and investigation, insofar as is known, has gone on in only a small number of societies. To the extent that Mesopotamian, Chinese, and Arabic learning dealt with grammar, their treatments were so enmeshed in the particularities of those languages and so little known to the European world until recently that they have had virtually no impact on Western linguistic tradition. Chinese linguistic and philological scholarship stretches back for more than two millennia, but the interest of those scholars was concentrated largely on phonetics, writing, and lexicography; their consideration of grammatical problems was bound up closely with the study of logic.

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Certainly the most interesting non-Western grammatical tradition—and the most original and independent—is that of India, which dates back at least two and one-half millennia and which culminates with the grammar of Panini, of the 5th century bce. There are three major ways in which the Sanskrit tradition has had an impact on modern linguistic scholarship. As soon as Sanskrit became known to the Western learned world, the unravelling of comparative Indo-European grammar ensued, and the foundations were laid for the whole 19th-century edifice of comparative philology and historical linguistics. But, for this, Sanskrit was simply a part of the data; Indian grammatical learning played almost no direct part. Nineteenth-century workers, however, recognized that the native tradition of phonetics in ancient India was vastly superior to Western knowledge, and this had important consequences for the growth of the science of phonetics in the West. Third, there is in the rules or definitions (sutras) of Panini a remarkably subtle and penetrating account of Sanskrit grammar. The construction of sentences, compound nouns, and the like is explained through ordered rules operating on underlying structures in a manner strikingly similar in part to modes of modern theory. As might be imagined, this perceptive Indian grammatical work held great fascination for 20th-century theoretical linguists. A study of Indian logic in relation to Paninian grammar alongside Aristotelian and Western logic in relation to Greek grammar and its successors could bring illuminating insights.

Whereas in ancient Chinese learning a separate field of study that might be called grammar scarcely took root, in ancient India a sophisticated version of this discipline developed early alongside the other sciences. Even though the study of Sanskrit grammar may originally have had the practical aim of keeping the sacred Vedic texts and their commentaries pure and intact, the study of grammar in India in the 1st millennium bce had already become an intellectual end in itself.

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/lɪŋˈɡwɪs.tɪk/ us

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/lɪŋˈɡwɪs.tɪk/

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C1 connected with language or the study of language: I'm particularly interested in the linguistic development of young children.

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linguistically

(Definition of linguistic from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

linguistic | American Dictionary

linguisticadjective [ not gradable ] us

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/lɪŋˈɡwɪs·tɪk/

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connected with language or the study of language: linguistic analysis

(Definition of linguistic from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of linguistic

linguistic

Research into semantic skills focuses less on the qualitative aspects of linguistic competence than does research into phonological and morphosyntactic skills.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Moreover, to ignore this combination of linguistic and sociocultural factors would degrade psychological research.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

It presents arguments for the relevance of the child's own production for the building of linguistic representations.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The target article refers to the process that synchronizes participants' linguistic representations as alignment.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Identifying the paths children take in recruiting already existing linguistic devices for new conceptual-syntactic mappings is of theoretical importance.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

But we do not need a technical linguistic term for abnormality/uncommonness/unusualness/ unexpectedness.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

While the following is often couched in linguistic language, technical terms are defined as they occur.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

But he is teaching something which is the object of study of linguistics, and is described by linguistic methods.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

It is usually bothersome to be confronted with statements about the supposed universal nature of a particular linguistic phenomenon.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Because of its relationship to the debate construed as the central debate for linguistic anthropology, their work is also construed as crucially theoretical.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This chapter was a boon to my students in an advanced course in linguistic anthropology.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Many students enter schools with a linguistic repertoire that straddles their languages.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

If linguistic knowledge does not sufficiently explain the different approaches that individual students take, what accounts for success in integration?

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Not unexpectedly, they tended to report that the correction of linguistic slips is done mainly as they write.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Characterizing the discourse functions of linguistic expressions is surely one of the most difficult tasks in linguistic analysis.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

What is the pronunciation of linguistic?

 

C1

Translations of linguistic

in Chinese (Traditional)

語言的, 語言學的…

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in Chinese (Simplified)

语言的, 语言学的…

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in Spanish

lingüístico…

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in Portuguese

linguístico…

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भाषाशास्त्र, भाषाविषयक किंवा भाषेचा अभ्यास…

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言語の, 言語学の…

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dille/dilbilimle ilgili, dilbilimsel…

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linguistique…

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lingüístic…

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taalkundig…

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மொழி அல்லது மொழி ஆய்வுடன் தொடர்புடையது…

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भाषा-संबंधी, भाषाविज्ञान…

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ભાષાકીય…

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lingvistisk, sprogvidenskabelig…

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lingvistisk…

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bahasa…

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linguistisch…

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språk-, språkvitenskapelig…

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لسانیات, لسانی…

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мовознавчий, лінгвістичний…

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лингвистический…

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భాష లేదా భాషా అధ్యయనంతో అనుసంధానించబడింది…

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لُغَوي…

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ভাষাগত…

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jazykovědný…

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linguistik…

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เกี่ยวกับภาษา…

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thuộc về ngôn ngữ…

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językoznawczy, lingwistyczny, językowy…

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언어학의…

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linguistico…

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lingually

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What is Linguistics and What do Linguists Study? A Full Guide

is Linguistics and What do Linguists Study? A Full GuideThis app works best with JavaScript enabled.🇺🇸Call Us: 1-866-423-7548Berlitz USALanguagesAll languagesEnglishSpanishFrenchGermanArabicRussianMandarinPortugueseItalianJapaneseKoreanOtherOnlineAll online languagesOnline EnglishOnline English self-study + private lessonsOnline SpanishOnline Spanish self-study + private lessonsOnline FrenchOnline GermanOnline KoreanOnline ItalianOnline PortugueseLive online coursesOnline self-study + private lessonsOnline kids and teens coursesAdultsAll adult coursesOnlinePrivateGroupsOnline self-study + private lessonsInternational studentsKids and TeensAll kids and teens coursesSchool programsOnline coursesIn-person coursesCorporationsAll corporate trainingLanguage trainingLanguage testing Culture trainingBusiness resourcesTuition reimbursementGovernmentAll government trainingLanguage trainingCulture trainingLanguage testingView MoreKids and TeensCorporationsGovernmentBerlitz USALanguagesAll languagesEnglishSpanishFrenchGermanArabicRussianMandarinPortugueseItalianJapaneseKoreanOtherOnlineAll online languagesOnline EnglishOnline English self-study + private lessonsOnline SpanishOnline Spanish self-study + private lessonsOnline FrenchOnline GermanOnline KoreanOnline ItalianOnline PortugueseLive online coursesOnline self-study + private lessonsOnline kids and teens coursesAdultsAll adult coursesOnlinePrivateGroupsOnline self-study + private lessonsInternational studentsKids and TeensAll kids and teens coursesSchool programsOnline coursesIn-person coursesCorporationsAll corporate trainingLanguage trainingLanguage testing Culture trainingBusiness resourcesTuition reimbursementGovernmentAll government trainingLanguage trainingCulture trainingLanguage testingView MoreAdultsKids and TeensCorporationsGovernmentClick to call1-866-423-7548Berlitz USAClick to callLanguagesAll languagesEnglishSpanishFrenchGermanArabicRussianMandarinPortugueseItalianJapaneseKoreanOtherOnlineAll online languagesOnline EnglishOnline English self-study + private lessonsOnline SpanishOnline Spanish self-study + private lessonsOnline FrenchOnline GermanOnline KoreanOnline ItalianOnline PortugueseLive online coursesOnline self-study + private lessonsOnline kids and teens coursesAdultsAll adult coursesOnlinePrivateGroupsOnline self-study + private lessonsInternational studentsKids and TeensAll kids and teens coursesSchool programsOnline coursesIn-person coursesCorporationsAll corporate trainingLanguage trainingLanguage testing Culture trainingBusiness resourcesTuition reimbursementGovernmentAll government trainingLanguage trainingCulture trainingLanguage testingHomeAllWhat is linguistics and can it help you learn a language?AllEducationCultureWhat is linguistics and can it help you learn a language?March 18, 2022AuthorSaga Briggs Linguistics is the study of human language, including its structure, history, acquisition, and practical use.

Linguistics may involve the study of foreign languages, but being a linguist doesn’t necessarily mean you speak several languages. The field is more about investigating the nature of language itself, and it’s even considered by many to be more of a science than an art. Surprisingly few of us know much about linguistics, however, and according to experts, that’s not for lack of interest but rather a flaw of our education systems:

“The problems that linguists face in communicating about our discipline mostly arise, I think, from the absence of any foundational teaching about linguistics in our elementary and middle schools,� said David Pesetsky, the Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics at MIT, in a recent interview. “This means that the most basic facts about language — including the building blocks of language and how they combine — remain unknown, even to most well-educated people.�

In this post, we’ll attempt to turn that trend around, helping to spread more awareness of linguistics and how they can support foreign language learning.

What do linguists study?

Linguistics is divided into several sub-fields. As defined by scholars at UCLA, these sub-fields are as follows:

Phonetics

The study of speech sounds, including both the production of sounds by the human voice (articulatory phonetics) and the properties of the sounds themselves (acoustic phonetics). Linguists who study phonetics ask the following questions:What are the sounds, from among all those that humans could make, that actually exist in the world’s languages?What specially defines different “accents�?Can speakers be identified by “voiceprints�?What are the properties of sounds that would apply in computerized speech synthesis?

Phonology

The study of how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds. Phonologists concern themselves with the following:What sounds contrast in one language but not another (answers to such questions explain why Spanish speakers have trouble with the difference between English sh and ch, or why English speakers have trouble with the different “u� sounds in French words like rue ‘street’ and roue ‘wheel’.)?What sounds of a language can or cannot occur one after the other (for example, why can words begin in st– in English but not in Spanish)?How do poets or writers or song lyrics intuitively know how to match the rhythm of speech to the abstract rhythmic pattern of a poetic or musical meter?

Morphology

The study of word structure, including how they are formed as well as their relationship to other words in the same language. Morphologists look at the following:To what extent are ways of forming words “productive� or not (e.g. why do English speakers say arrival and amusement but not *arrivement and *amusal)?What determines when words change form (for example, why does English have to add –er to adjectives when making comparisons, but Hebrew does not add any equivalent)?How can humans program computers to recognize the “root� of a word separated from its “affixes� (e.g. how could a computer recognize walk, walks, walking, and walked as the “same� word)?

Syntax

The study of how words and morphemes combine to form phrases and sentences. Syntacticians examine these questions:How can the number of sentences that speakers can create be infinite in number even though the number of words in any language is finite?What makes a sentence like visiting relatives can be boring ambiguous?Why would English speakers judge a sentence like colorless green ideas sleep furiously to be “grammatical� even though it is nonsensical?How can languages express the same thoughts even though they construct their sentences in different ways (e.g. Why does English I saw them there mean the same thing as French je les y ai vus even though the order of elements in French is I them there have seen)?How can humans program a computer to analyze the structure of sentences?

Semantics

The study of the meaning of language, as opposed to its structure. This concerns the following: How do speakers know what words mean (e.g. How does one know where red stops and orange starts)?What is the basis of metaphors (e.g. Why is my car is a lemon a “good� metaphor but my car is a cabbage is not)?What makes sentences like I’m looking for a tall student or the student I am looking for must be tall have more than one meaning?In a sentence like I regret that he lied, how do we know that, in fact, he did lie?How many meanings can be found in a sentence like three students read three books and why do just those meanings exist?

Disciplines of linguistics

In addition to these sub-fields, linguistics can be categorized into the following disciplines:

DisciplineDefinition

Historical linguisticsThe history and development of language.

SociolinguisticsThe use of language in social contexts.

PsycholinguisticsThe processing of language in real time production and comprehension.

NeurolinguisticsHow language is represented in the brain.

Language acquisition and bilingualismThe acquisition of language(s) in children and adults.

Anthropological linguisticsThe use of languages in different ethnic contexts.

DialectologyThe study of language-internal variation.Computational linguisticsLanguage as a formal algorithm.

Can linguistics help you learn a foreign language?

Good news: it can. Researchers have been studying the application of linguistics to foreign language learning for many years, resulting in a wide range of tips teachers and learners can adopt. One example is the use of metaphors to learn vocabulary.

In his book Cognitive Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition, and Foreign Language Teaching, Michel Achard, Professor of Linguistics at Rice University, writes: “Thinking and communicating abstract thought requires metaphor. Whenever genuine communication takes place, abstract ideas may be expressed, and thus figurative language may be needed. Metaphor provides learners with a tool to extend the meaning of simple, concrete words to denote more complex, abstract concepts for which they have not yet acquired the precise term.�

This is just one instance of how concepts from linguistics can be harnessed to master your target language. Once you start cultivating an interest in linguistics yourself, the possibilities will seem endless. Share thisFacebookTwitterLinkedinRelated ArticlesFebruary 26, 202210 of the best foreign language meetups from all over the worldRead ArticleJanuary 28, 2022An in-depth exploration of the neuroscience of language learningRead ArticleNovember 16, 2021How to train your brain to learn a language through musicRead ArticleCall Us1-866-423-7548

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What is Linguistics? - Department of Linguistics - UCLA

What is Linguistics? - Department of Linguistics - UCLA

The UCLA Linguistics Department’s normal business hours are M-F 8am-12pm, 1-4pm. Office schedule and availability may change based on UCLA protocol (www.covid-19.ucla.edu). Masks are optional but strongly recommended indoors. All UCLA affiliates and visitors must self-screen for symptoms before coming to campus.

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Home > Undergraduate > What is Linguistics?

What is Linguistics?

Linguistics is the scientific study of language.  Linguists (experts in linguistics) work on specific languages, but their primary goal is to understand the nature of language in general by asking questions such as:

What distinguishes human language from other animal communication systems?

What features are common to all human languages?

How are the modes of linguistic communication (speech, writing, sign language) related to each other?

How is language related to other types of human behavior?

The main goal of linguistics, like all other intellectual disciplines, is to increase our knowledge and understanding of the world. Since language is universal and fundamental to all human interactions, the knowledge attained in linguistics has many practical applications.  Linguists, with some training in other appropriate disciplines, are thus prepared to seek answers to questions such as:

How can a previously unstudied language be analyzed and written?

How can foreign languages best be taught and learned?

How can speech be synthesized on a computer or how can a computer be programmed to understand human speech?

How can the language problems of people with speech abnormalities be analyzed and rectified?

How are linguistic issues in legal matters to be handled?

The Sub-Fields of Linguistics

Language is a phenomenon with many layers, from the sounds that speakers produce to the meanings that those sounds express.  The field of Linguistics is comprised of several sub-fields. Most professional linguists become specialists in one or more of these sub-fields.  The major ones are:

Phonetics

The study of speech sounds.  Phoneticians study both the production of speech sounds by the human speech organs (articulatory phonetics) and the properties of the sounds themselves (acoustic phonetics).  Phoneticians are concerned with such questions as:

What are the sounds, from among all those that humans could make, that actually exist in the world’s languages?

What specially defines different “accents”?

Can speakers be identified by “voiceprints”?

What are the properties of sounds that would apply in computerized speech synthesis?

Phonology

The study of language sound systems.  Phonologists are concerned with questions such as:

What sounds contrast in one language but not another (answers to such questions explain why Spanish speakers have trouble with the difference between English sh and ch, or why English speakers have trouble with the different “u” sounds in French words like rue ‘street’ and roue ‘wheel’.)?

What sounds of a language can or cannot occur one after the other (for example, why can words begin in st– in English but not in Spanish)?

How do poets or writers or song lyrics intuitively know how to match the rhythm of speech to the abstract rhythmic pattern of a poetic or musical meter?

Morphology

The study of word structure.  Morphologists examine such questions as:

To what extent are ways of forming words “productive” or not (e.g. why do English speakers say arrival and amusement but not *arrivement and *amusal)?

What determines when words change form (for example, why does English have to add –er to adjectives when making comparisons, but Hebrew does not add any equivalent)?

How can humans program computers to recognize the “root” of a word separated from its “affixes” (e.g. how could a computer recognize walk, walks, walking, and walked as the “same” word)?

Syntax

The study of how linguistic units larger than the word are constructed.  Syntacticians address such questions as:

How can the number of sentences that speakers can create be infinite in number even though the number of words in any language is finite?

What makes a sentence like visiting relatives can be boring ambiguous?

Why would English speakers judge a sentence like colorless green ideas sleep furiously to be “grammatical” even though it is nonsensical?

How can languages express the same thoughts even though they construct their sentences in different ways (e.g. Why does English I saw them there mean the same thing as French je les y ai vus even though the order of elements in French is I them there have seen)?

How can humans program a computer to analyze the structure of sentences?

Semantics

The study of meaning.  Semanticists answer such questions as:

How do speakers know what words mean (e.g. How does one know where red stops and orange starts)?

What is the basis of metaphors (e.g. Why is my car is a lemon a “good” metaphor but my car is a cabbage is not)?

What makes sentences like I’m looking for a tall student or the student I am looking for must be tall have more than one meaning?

In a sentence like I regret that he lied, how do we know that, in fact, he did lie?

How many meanings can be found in a sentence like three students read three books and why do just those meanings exist?

In addition to these sub-fields, there are a number of other sub-fields that cross-cut them:

Historical linguistics

The study of how languages change over time, addressing such questions as why modern English is different form Old English and Middle English or what it means to say that English and German are “more closely related” to each other than English and French.

Sociolinguistics

The study of how language is used in society, addressing such questions as what makes some dialects more “prestigious” than others, where slang comes from and why it arises, or what happens when two languages come together in “bilingual” communities.

Psycholinguistics

The study of how language is processed in the mind, addressing such questions as how we can hear a string of language noises and make sense of them, how children can learn to speak and understand the language of their environment as quickly and effortlessly as they do, or how people with pathological language problems differ from people who have “normal” language.

Neurolinguistics

The study of the actual encoding of language in the brain, addressing such questions as what parts of the brain different aspects of language are stored in, how language is actually stored, what goes on physically in the brain when language is processed, or how the brain compensates when certain areas are damaged.

Computational linguistics

Learning and understanding a language involves computing the properties of that language that are described in its phonology, syntax, and semantics.  The challenge of describing this process connects linguistics with computational issues at a very fundamental level.  How could syntactic structures be computed from spoken language, how are semantic relations recognized, and how could these computational skills be acquired?

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What is Linguistics?

In a nutshell: Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Linguists apply the scientific method to conduct formal studies of speech sounds and gestures, grammatical structures, and meaning across the world’s 6,000+ languages.

 

 

Linguistics in Everyday Life

Whether it’s telling a joke, naming a baby, using voice recognition software, or helping a relative who’s had a stroke, you’ll find the study of language reflected in almost everything you do. Linguists study meaning, discourse, and many other language aspects that you have always wondered about.

Studying Linguistics

When you study linguistics at any level, you gain insight into one of the most fundamental parts of being human- the ability to communicate through language. You can study every aspect of language from functional theory to language acquisition, and computational linguistics to psycholinguistics. Studying linguistics enables you to understand how language works, and how it is used, developed and preserved over time.

Issues in Linguistics

Learn more about a range of issues that linguists are working to address through their participation in the LSA.

The Science of Linguistics

Linguists are not only polyglots, grammarians, and word lovers. They are researchers dedicated to the systematic study of language who apply the scientific method by making observations, testing hypotheses, and developing theories. The science of language encompasses more than sounds, grammar, and meaning. When you study linguistics, you are at the crossroads of every discipline. 

Linguistics as a Profession

An undergraduate or advanced degree in linguistics can prepare you for a career in a variety of different fields, including but not limited to: teaching, publishing, national security, international affairs, policy, forensics, medicine and technology.

 

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Home / About / What is Linguistics?

What is Linguistics?PhD Students Research Poster (photo by mjzimmer)Each human language is a complex of knowledge and abilities enabling speakers of the language to communicate with each other, to express ideas, hypotheses, emotions, desires, and all the other things that need expressing. Linguistics is the study of these knowledge systems in all their aspects: how is such a knowledge system structured, how is it acquired, how is it used in the production and comprehension of messages, how does it change over time? Linguists consequently are concerned with a number of particular questions about the nature of language. What properties do all human languages have in common? How do languages differ, and to what extent are the differences systematic, i.e. can we find patterns in the differences? How do children acquire such complete knowledge of a language in such a short time? What are the ways in which languages can change over time, and are there limitations to how languages change? What is the nature of the cognitive processes that come into play when we produce and understand language?

The part of linguistics that is concerned with the structure of language is divided into a number of subfields:

Phonetics - the study of speech sounds in their physical aspects

Phonology - the study of speech sounds in their cognitive aspects

Morphology - the study of the formation of words

Syntax - the study of the formation of sentences

Semantics - the study of meaning

Pragmatics - the study of language use

Aside from language structure, other perspectives on language are represented in specialized or interdisciplinary branches:

Historical Linguistics

Sociolinguistics

Psycholinguistics

Ethnolinguistics (or Anthropological Linguistics)

Dialectology

Computational Linguistics

Neurolinguistics

Because language is such a central feature of being a human, Linguistics has intellectual connections and overlaps with many other disciplines in the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. Some of the closest connections are with Philosophy, Literature, Language Pedagogy, Psychology, Sociology, Physics (acoustics), Biology (anatomy, neuroscience), Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Health Sciences (Aphasia, Speech Therapy).

The main purpose of the study of Linguistics in an academic environment is the advancement of knowledge. However, because of the centrality of language in human interaction and behavior, the knowledge gained through the study of linguistics has many practical consequences and uses. Graduates of undergraduate and graduate programs in Linguistics apply their training in many diverse areas, including language pedagogy, speech pathology, speech synthesis, natural language interfaces, search engines, machine translation, forensics, naming, and of course all forms of writing, editing, and publishing. Perhaps the most widely appreciated application was contributed by UCSC Linguistics alumnus Marc Okrand, who invented the Klingon language for Star Trek. 

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