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Monday, November 13, 2017

Linguistics - The Study of Languages



Linguistics is the scientific study of the nature and structure of languages, founded and organized in the mid-nineteenth century. Although it is generally acceptable to refer to someone who knows several languages as 'a good linguist', it is not a precise use of the word. A linguist is a trained scientist who studies how languages work.

We can divide the study of the linguistic system itself into six categories, with each category focusing on a different level of description and analysis:

  • Phonetics - the physical nature of speech
  • Phonology - the study of language sounds
  • Morphology - the study of various changes in the individual word to alter its meaning (prefixes, internal changes)
  • Syntax - the arrangement of words in a sentence or word group
  • Pragmatics - the effect of situation on language use
  • Vocabulary - the study of individual words and their origins; includes the subgroups etymology (the history of individual words) and semantics (the study of word meanings)
We can also break up the study of linguistics into categories based on the possible connections between linguistics and external topics. Since the list of topics related to language or language use is open-ended, this list could be extended almost indefinitely (forensic linguistics, neurolinguistics, preventive linguistics, etc.)
  • Theoretical linguistics - how languages work
  • Descriptive linguistics - the phenomena of language through the study of the sound and structure of spoken language
  • Historical linguistics - the development of language and how it changes over the course of time
  • Geolinguistics - the study of the effects of historical factors on language, including spheres of influence, multilingualism, class language, jargon, and slang
  • Psycholinguistics - how language is implemented in the brain
  • Sociolinguistics - language and the structure of society
  • Applied linguistics - teaching, translation, etc.
  • Computational linguistics - computer processing of human language
  • Comparitive linguistics - compares the structures of two or more languages
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