What is linguistics?
Firstly, I want to say one thing before linguistic explanation. I have been studying linguistics since I finished university…Anyway…one question for us: What is linguistics and why study it?
A linguistic studies languages, language usage, language families and/or languages in general to be able to speak and/or use it in their field of work. Linguistics is concerned with the nature of language and communication. It deals both with the study of particular languages, and the search for general properties common to all languages or large groups of languages. It includes the following subareas :
- Phonetics (the study of the production, acoustics and hearing of speech sounds) It means, the study of speech sounds in their physical aspects.
- Phonology (the patterning of sounds)It means, the study of speech sounds in their cognitive aspects
- Morphology (the structure of words)It means, the study of the formation of words
- Syntax (the structure of sentences) It means, the study of the formation of sentences
- Semantics (meaning)It means, the study of meaning
- Pragmatics (language in context)It means, the study of language use
Language are represented in interdisciplinary part:
- Historical Linguistics: the study of the history and development of languages
- Sociolinguistics: the study of language in relation to social factors, including differences of regional, class, and occupational dialect, gender differences, and bilingualism.
- Computational Linguistics: the branch of linguistics in which the techniques of computer science are applied to the analysis and synthesis of language and speech
- Neurolinguistics: the branch of linguistics dealing with the relationship between language and the structure and functioning of the brain.
