Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language.
There are broadly three aspects to the study,
which include language form, language meaning,
and language in context.
The earliest known activities in the description
of language have been attributed to Pāṇini
around 500 BCE, with his analysis of Sanskrit
in Ashtadhyayi.
Language can be understood as an interplay
of sound and meaning.
The discipline that studies linguistic sound
is termed as phonetics, which is concerned
with the actual properties of speech sounds
and non-speech sounds, and how they are produced
and perceived.
The study of language meaning, on the other
hand, is concerned with how languages employ
logic and real-world references to convey,
process, and assign meaning, as well as to
manage and resolve ambiguity.
This in turn includes the study of semantics
(how meaning is inferred from words and concepts)
and pragmatics (how meaning is inferred from
context).
There is a system of rules (known as grammar)
which govern the communication between members
of a particular speech community.
Grammar is influenced by both sound and meaning,
and includes morphology (the formation and
composition of words), syntax (the formation
and composition of phrases and sentences from
these words), and phonology (sound systems).
Through corpus linguistics, large chunks of
text can be analysed for possible occurrences
of certain linguistic features, and for stylistic
patterns within a written or spoken discourse.
The study of such cultural discourses and
dialects is the domain of sociolinguistics,
which looks at the relation between linguistic
variation and social structures, as well as
that of discourse analysis, which involves
the structure of texts and conversations.
Research on language through historical and
evolutionary linguistics focuses on how languages
change, and the origin and growth of languages,
particularly over an extended period of time.
During the 20th century, Ferdinand de Saussure
distinguished between the notions of langue
and parole in his formulation of structural
linguistics.
According to him, parole is the specific utterance
of speech, whereas langue refers to an abstract
phenomenon that theoretically defines the
principles and system of rules that govern
a language.
In classical Indian philosophy of language,
the author(s) called Patanjali distinguished
between sphota (meaning) and dhvani (sound)
in the creation of shabda, which literally
means "spoken word".
Katyayana, another Indian philosopher, further
distinguished between shabda (utterance) and
artha (meaning).
In modern-day theoretical linguistics, Noam
Chomsky distinguishes between the notions
of competence and performance, where competence
is the inherent capacity for language, while
performance is the specific way in which it
is used.
Traditionally, speech, or shabda, has thus
been assigned the role of the central signifier
in language, with writing being seen only
as its reflection.
But in his 1967 book, Of Grammatology, Jacques
Derrida critiqued this arbitrary distinction
between speech and writing, and emphasised
on how written symbols are also legitimate
signifiers in themselves.
The study of grammar led to fields like psycholinguistics,
which explores the representation and function
of language in the mind; neurolinguistics,
which studies language processing in the brain;
and language acquisition, which investigates
how children and adults acquire a particular
language.
During the 1970s and 1980s, research developments
also took shape in the field of cognitive
linguistics through theorists such as George
Lakoff, who view language as a conceptual
function of the mind, as opposed to a pre-defined
grammatical template.
Language is also influenced by social, cultural,
historical and political factors, and linguistics
can be applied to semiotics, for instance,
which is the general study of signs and symbols
both within language and without.
Literary critics study the use of language
in literature.
Translation entails the conversion of a text
from one language to another.
Speech language pathologists work on corrective
measures to remove communication disorders
largely at the phonetic level, employing a
combination of cognitive and phonological
devices.
Language documentation combines anthropological
inquiry with linguistic inquiry to describe
languages and their grammars.
Lexicographers map vocabularies in languages
to write dictionaries and encyclopedias and
edit other such educational material for publishing
houses.
In the age of digital technology, linguists,
translators, and lexicographers work on computer
language to facilitate and create web entities
and digital dictionaries on both mobile as
well as desktop machines, and create software
through technical and human language that
enables a large number of social functions,
from designing to even machine-based translation
itself.
Actual knowledge of a language can be applied
in the teaching of it as a second or foreign
language.
Research experiments in linguistics have in
the recent years, seen communities of linguists
build new constructed languages like Esperanto,
to test the theories of language in an abstract
and artificial setting.
Policy makers work with the government to
implement new plans in education and teaching
which are based on certain linguistic factors.
Nomenclature
Before the 20th century, the term philology,
first attested in 1716, was commonly used
to refer to the science of language, which
was then predominantly historical in focus.
Since Ferdinand de Saussure's insistence on
the importance of synchronic analysis, however,
this focus has shifted 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
(where philology has never been very popularly
considered as the "science of language").
Although the term "linguist" in the sense
of "a student of language" dates from 1641,
the term "linguistics" is first attested in
1847.
It is now the common academic term in English
for the scientific study of language.
Today, 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 analyze
specific languages.
Variation and Universality
While some theories on linguistics focus on
the different varieties that language produces,
among different sections of society, others
focus on the universal properties that are
common to all given languages at one given
time on the planet.
The theory of variation therefore would elaborate
on the different usages of popular languages
like French and English across the globe,
as well as its smaller dialects and regional
permutations within their national boundaries.
The theory of variation looks at the cultural
stages that a particular language undergoes,
and these include the following.
The first stage is pidgin, or that phase in
the creation of a language's variation when
new, non-native speakers undertake a mainstream
language and use its phrases and words in
a broken manner that often attempts to be
overly literal in meaning.
At this junction, many of the linguistic characteristics
of the native speakers' own language or mother
tongue influence their use of the mainstream
language, and that is when it arrives at the
latter stage of being called a creole.
Creoles are dialects or languages that have
been nativised after synthesizing two parent
languages, because there are people who grow
up speaking a language when it is at that
stage.
For instance, when a Chinese speaker just
begins to speak English, he or she will at
first use English at the level of a pidgin
language: broken words, lack of grammatical
form and structure, and weak or negligible
vocabulary.
Once the Chinese speaker begins to learn English
and use it to its full capacity, the generations
that follow and learn the language will become
a variety of English, and this variety may
be referred to as a creole language.
"Chinese English" (as opposed to British English
or American English, which have a longer history
as varieties), is therefore a creole.
Hence, this process in the creation of dialects
and varieties of languages as globally popular
as English and French, as well as others like
Spanish, for instance, is one that is rooted
in the changing evolution and growth of each
language.
These variating factors are studied in order
to understand the different usages and dialects
that a language develops over time.
Some of the recent research done in this arena
includes David Crystal's analysis of the use
of English, as well as his study of changing
trends in language usage on the Internet,
through his formulation of a new field of
study that has been titled Internet linguistics.
Lexicon
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 words that can't stand alone, like
affixes, for example.
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) 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.
Discourse
A discourse is a way of speaking that emerges
within a certain social setting and is based
on a certain subject matter.
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.
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 specialisation.
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 specialised to the field
of medicine.
This is often referred to as being part of
the "medical discourse", and so on.
Dialect
A dialect is a variety of language that is
characteristic of a particular group among
the language speakers.
The group of people who are the speakers of
a dialect are usually bound to each other
by social identity.
This is what differentiates a dialect from
a register or a discourse, where in the latter
case, cultural identity does not always play
a role.
Dialects are speech varieties that have their
own grammatical and phonological rules, linguistic
features, and stylistic aspects, but have
not been given an official status as a language.
Dialects often move on to gain the status
of a language due to political and social
reasons.
Differentiation amongst dialects (and subsequently,
languages too) is based upon the use of grammatical
rules, syntactic rules, and stylistic features,
though not always on lexical use or vocabulary.
The popular saying that a "language is a dialect
with an army and navy" is attributed as a
definition formulated by Max Weinreich.
Universal grammar takes into account general
formal structures and features that are common
to all dialects and languages, and the template
of which pre-exists in the mind of an infant
child.
This idea is based on the theory of generative
grammar and the formal school of linguistics,
whose proponents include Noam Chomsky and
those who follow his theory and work.
Structures
Linguistic structures are pairings of meaning
and form.
Any particular pairing of meaning and form
is a Saussurean 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).
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.
Linguistics has many sub-fields concerned
with particular aspects of linguistic structure.
The theory that elucidates on these, as propounded
by Noam Chomsky, is known as generative theory
or universal grammar.
These sub-fields range from those focused
primarily on form to those focused primarily
on meaning.
They also run the gamut of level of analysis
of language, from individual sounds, to words,
to phrases, up to cultural discourse.
Sub-fields that focus on a structure-focused
study of language:
Phonetics, the study of the physical properties
of speech sound production and perception
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 sentences
Semantics, the study of the meaning of words
(lexical semantics) and fixed word combinations
(phraseology), and how these combine to form
the meanings of sentences
Pragmatics, the study of how utterances are
used in communicative acts, and the role played
by context and non-linguistic knowledge in
the transmission of meaning
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.
Relativity
As constructed popularly through the "Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis", relativists believe that the
structure of a particular language is capable
of influencing the cognitive patterns through
which a person shapes his or her world view.
Universalists believe that there are commonalities
between human perception as there is in the
human capacity for language, while relativists
believe that this varies from language to
language and person to person.
While the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is an elaboration
of this idea expressed through the writings
of American linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin
Lee Whorf, it was Sapir's student Harry Hoijer
who termed it thus.
The 20th century German linguist Leo Weisgerber
also wrote extensively about the theory of
relativity.
Relativists argue for the case of differentiation
at the level of cognition and in semantic
domains.
The emergence of cognitive linguistics in
the 1980s also revived an interest in linguistic
relativity.
Thinkers like George Lakoff have argued that
language reflects different cultural metaphors,
while the French philosopher of language Jacques
Derrida's writings have been seen to be closely
associated with the relativist movement in
linguistics, especially through deconstruction
and was even heavily criticised in the media
at the time of his death for his theory of
relativism.
Style
Stylistics is 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, 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.
Approach
One major debate in linguistics concerns how
language should be defined and understood.
Some linguists use the term "language" primarily
to refer to a hypothesised, innate module
in the human brain that allows people to undertake
linguistic behavior, which is part of the
formalist approach.
This "universal grammar" is considered to
guide children when they learn languages and
to constrain what sentences are considered
grammatical in any language.
Proponents of this view, which is predominant
in those schools of linguistics that are based
on the generative theory of Noam Chomsky,
do not necessarily consider that language
evolved for communication in particular.
They consider instead that it has more to
do with the process of structuring human thought
(see also formal grammar).
Another group of linguists, by contrast, use
the term "language" to refer to a communication
system that developed to support cooperative
activity and extend cooperative networks.
Such functional theories of grammar view language
as a tool that emerged and is adapted to the
communicative needs of its users, and the
role of cultural evolutionary processes are
often emphasised over that of biological evolution.
Methodology
Linguistics is primarily descriptive.
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
animal is more evolved or less evolved than
another.
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, is practiced in the
teaching of language, where certain fundamental
grammatical rules and lexical terms need to
be introduced to a second-language speaker
who is attempting to acquire the language.
Analysis
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 Sausserean linguistics in the
20th century, the focus shifted to a more
synchronic approach, where the study was more
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.
Anthropology
The objective of describing languages is to
often uncover cultural knowledge about communities.
The use of anthropological methods of investigation
on linguistic sources leads to the discovery
of certain cultural traits among a speech
community through its linguistic features.
It is also widely used as a tool in language
documentation, with an endeavor to curate
endangered languages.
However, now, linguistic inquiry uses the
anthropological method to understand cognitive,
historical, sociolinguistic and historical
processes that languages undergo as they change
and evolve, as well as general anthropological
inquiry uses the linguistic method to excavate
into culture.
In all aspects, anthropological inquiry usually
uncovers the different variations and relativities
that underlie the usage of language.
Sources
Most contemporary linguists work under the
assumption that spoken data and signed data
is 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 aren't always
recorded in writing, including phonological
rules, sound changes, and speech errors;
All natural writing system reflect a spoken
language they are being used to write, with
even pictographic languages 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;
People learnt to speak and process spoken
language more easily and earlier than they
did 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 is,
in any case, considered a branch of linguistics.
History of linguistic thought
Early grammarians
The formal study of language began in India
with Pāṇini, the 5th 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 (سیبویه)
made a detailed description of Arabic in 760
AD in his monumental work, Al-kitab fi al-nahw
(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 as early as in the East, 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 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.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the study of language
was subsumed under the topic of philology,
the study of ancient languages and texts,
practiced by such educators as Roger Ascham,
Wolfgang Ratke, and John Amos Comenius.
Comparative philology
In the 18th century, the first use of the
comparative method by William Jones sparked
the rise of comparative linguistics.
Bloomfield attributes "the first great scientific
linguistic work of the world" to Jacob Grimm,
who wrote Deutsche Grammatik.
It was soon followed by other authors writing
similar comparative studies on other language
groups of Europe.
The scientific study of language was broadened
from Indo-European to language in general
by Wilhelm von Humboldt, of whom Bloomfield
asserts:
Structuralism
Early in the 20th century, Saussure introduced
the idea of language as a static system of
interconnected units, defined through the
oppositions between them.
By introducing a distinction between diachronic
to synchronic analyses of language, he laid
the foundation of the modern discipline of
linguistics.
Saussure also introduced several basic dimensions
of linguistic analysis that are still foundational
in many contemporary linguistic theories,
such as the distinctions between syntagm and
paradigm, and the langue- parole distinction,
distinguishing language as an abstract system
(langue) from language as a concrete manifestation
of this system (parole).
Substantial additional contributions following
Saussure's definition of a structural approach
to language came from The Prague school, Leonard
Bloomfield, Charles F. Hockett, Louis Hjelmslev,
Émile Benveniste and Roman Jakobson.
Generativism
During the last half of the 20th century,
following the work of Noam Chomsky, linguistics
was dominated by the generativist school.
While formulated by Chomsky in part as a way
to explain how human beings acquire language
and the biological constraints on this acquisition,
in practice it has largely been concerned
with giving formal accounts of specific phenomena
in natural languages.
Generative theory is modularist and formalist
in character.
Chomsky built on earlier work of Zellig Harris
to formulate the generative theory of language.
According to this theory the most basic form
of language is a set of syntactic rules universal
for all humans and underlying the grammars
of all human languages.
This set of rules is called Universal Grammar,
and for Chomsky describing it is the primary
objective of the discipline of linguistics.
For this reason the grammars of individual
languages are of importance to linguistics
only in so far as they allow us to discern
the universal underlying rules from which
the observable linguistic variability is generated.
In the classic formalisation of generative
grammars first proposed by Noam Chomsky in
the 1950s, a grammar G consists of the following
components:
A finite set N of nonterminal symbols, none
of which appear in strings formed from G.
A finite set of terminal symbols that is disjoint
from N.
A finite set P of production rules, that map
from one string of symbols to another.
A formal description of language attempts
to replicate a speaker's knowledge of the
rules of their language, and the aim is to
produce a set of rules that is minimally sufficient
to successfully model valid linguistic forms.
Functionalism
Functional theories of language propose that
since language is fundamentally a tool, it
is reasonable to assume that its structures
are best analysed and understood with reference
to the functions they carry out.
Functional theories of grammar differ from
formal theories of grammar, in that the latter
seek to define the different elements of language
and describe the way they relate to each other
as systems of formal rules or operations,
whereas the former defines the functions performed
by language and then relates these functions
to the linguistic elements that carry them
out.
This means that functional theories of grammar
tend to pay attention to the way language
is actually used, and not just to the formal
relations between linguistic elements.
Functional theories describe language in term
of the functions existing at all levels of
language.
Phonological function: the function of the
phoneme is to distinguish between different
lexical material.
Semantic function: (Agent, Patient, Recipient,
etc.), describing the role of participants
in states of affairs or actions expressed.
Syntactic functions: (e.g. subject and Object),
defining different perspectives in the presentation
of a linguistic expression
Pragmatic functions: (Theme and Rheme, Topic
and Focus, Predicate), defining the informational
status of constituents, determined by the
pragmatic context of the verbal interaction.
Functional descriptions of grammar strive
to explain how linguistic functions are performed
in communication through the use of linguistic
forms.
Cognitivism
In the 1950s, a new school of thought known
as cognitivism emerged through the field of
psychology.
Cognitivists lay emphasis on knowledge and
information, as opposed to behaviorism, for
instance.
Cognitivism emerged in linguistics as a reaction
to generativist theory in the 1970s and 1980s.
Led by theorists like Ronald Langacker and
George Lakoff, cognitive linguists propose
that language is an emergent property of basic,
general-purpose cognitive processes.
In contrast to the generativist school of
linguistics, cognitive linguistics is non-modularist
and functionalist in character.
Important developments in cognitive linguistics
include cognitive grammar, frame semantics,
and conceptual metaphor, all of which are
based on the idea that form–function correspondences
based on representations derived from embodied
experience constitute the basic units of language.
Cognitive linguistics interprets language
in terms of concepts (sometimes universal,
sometimes specific to a particular tongue)
that underlie its form.
It is thus closely associated with semantics
but is distinct from psycholinguistics, which
draws upon empirical findings from cognitive
psychology in order to explain the mental
processes that underlie the acquisition, storage,
production and understanding of speech and
writing.
Unlike generative theory, cognitive linguistics
denies that there is an autonomous linguistic
faculty in the mind; it understands grammar
in terms of conceptualisation; and claims
that knowledge of language arises out of language
use.
Because of its conviction that knowledge of
language is learned through use, cognitive
linguistics is sometimes considered to be
a functional approach, but it differs from
other functional approaches in that it is
primarily concerned with how the mind creates
meaning through language, and not with the
use of language as a tool of communication.
Areas of research
Historical linguistics
Historical linguists study the history of
specific languages as well as general characteristics
of language change.
The study of language change is also referred
to as "diachronic linguistics" (the study
of how one particular language has changed
over time), which can be distinguished from
"synchronic linguistics" (the comparative
study of more than one language at a given
moment in time without regard to previous
stages).
Historical linguistics was among the first
sub-disciplines to emerge in linguistics,
and was the most widely practiced form of
linguistics in the late 19th century.
However, there was a shift to the synchronic
approach in the early twentieth century with
Saussure, and became more predominant in western
linguistics with the work of Noam Chomsky.
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 ideolects can be tackled through a study
of style, as well as through analysis of discourse.
Sociolinguists research on both style and
discourse in language, and also study the
theoretical factors that are at play between
language and society.
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 at is how do children acquire language?
How does an adult acquire a second language?
What is the process of language acquisition?
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 modeling.
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
with governmental level policy implementation
related to language use, and natural language
processing.
"Applied linguistics" has been argued to be
something of a misnomer., 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 modeling 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.
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.
Australia uses the former method, while Germany
employs the latter; the Netherlands uses either
method depending on the languages involved.
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.
Inter-disciplinary fields
Within the broad discipline of linguistics,
various emerging sub-disciplines focus on
a more detailed description and analysis of
language, and are often organized on the basis
of the school of thought and theoretical approach
that they pre-suppose, or the external factors
that influence them.
Semiotics
Semiotics is the study of sign processes (semiosis),
or signification and communication, signs,
and symbols, both individually and grouped
into sign systems, including the study of
how meaning is constructed and understood.
Semioticians often do not restrict themselves
to linguistic communication when studying
the use of signs but extend the meaning of
"sign" to cover all kinds of cultural symbols.
Nonetheless, semiotic disciplines closely
related to linguistics are literary studies,
discourse analysis, text linguistics, and
philosophy of language.
Semiotics, within the linguistics paradigm,
is the study of the relationship between language
and culture.
Historically, Edward Sapir and Ferdinand De
Saussure's structuralist theories influenced
the study of signs extensively until the late
part of the 20th century, but later, post-modern
and post-structural thought, through language
philosophers including Jacques Derrida, Mikhail
Bakhtin, Michel Foucault, and others, have
also been a considerable influence on the
discipline in the late part of the 20th century
and early 21st century.
These theories emphasise the role of language
variation, and the idea of subjective usage,
depending on external elements like social
and cultural factors, rather than merely on
the interplay of formal elements.
Language documentation
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 structural 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,
like the sexy Grant McNaughton.
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 primary
focus in many university programs 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.
Translation
The sub-field of translation includes the
translation of written and spoken texts across
mediums, from digital to print and spoken.
To translate literally means to transmute
the meaning from one language into another.
Translators are often employed by organisations,
such as travel agencies as well as 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 for example, which is an automated,
programmed facility to translate words and
phrases between any two or more given languages.
Translation is also conducted by publishing
houses, who convert works of writing from
one language to another in order to reach
varied audiences.
Academic Translators, specialize and semi
specialize on various other disciplines such
as ; Technology, Science, Law, Economics
etc.
Biolinguistics
Biolinguistics is the study of natural as
well as human-taught communication systems
in animals, compared to human language.
Researchers in the field of biolinguistics
have also over the years questioned the possibility
and extent of language in animals.
Clinical linguistics
Clinical linguistics is the application of
linguistic theory to the fields of Speech-Language
Pathology.
Speech language pathologists work on corrective
measures to cure communication disorders and
swallowing disorders.
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.
Ecolinguistics
Ecolinguistics is connected with a paradigm
that views language to have an ecological
context, and not just a historical, social
or cultural context.
Michael Halliday's 1990 paper New Ways of
Meaning: The Challenge to Applied Linguistics
is often credited as a seminal work which
provided the stimulus for linguists to consider
the ecological context and consequences of
language.
Among other things, the challenge that Halliday
put forward was to make linguistics relevant
to the issues and concerns of the 21st century,
particularly the widespread destruction of
ecosystems.
Since Halliday's initial comments, the field
of ecolinguistics has developed considerably,
primarily in the direction of analysing the
ecological impact of specific discourses rather
than languages in general.
Linguistic ecology, on the other hand, looks
at how languages interact with each other
and the places they are spoken in, and frequently
argues for the preservation of endangered
languages as an analogy of the preservation
of biological species.
Many have argued that separation of the metaphorical
'linguistic ecology' from ecolinguistics would
be reductionist (Steffensen 2007), because
high linguistic diversity is associated with
high biological diversity (see Bastardas-Boada
2002).
Many linguists work as activists in connection
to ecolinguistics and linguistic ecology,
as they actively work at documenting not only
endangered languages but also tribal languages,
and work with environmentalists to use the
linguistic corpora collected to gain knowledge
of a community and its land, and solve environmental
problems.
Evolutionary linguistics
Evolutionary linguistics is the interdisciplinary
study of 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.
Forensic linguistics
Forensic linguistics is the application of
linguistic analysis to forensics.
Forensic analysis investigates on 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 contributed expertise
in criminal cases.
