Linguistics is the scientific study of language,
and it involves an analysis of language form,
language meaning, and language in context.
The earliest activities in the documentation
and description of language have been attributed
to the 6th century BC Indian grammarian Pāṇini,
who wrote a formal description of the Sanskrit
language in his Aṣṭādhyāyī.Linguists
traditionally analyse human language by observing
an interplay between sound and meaning. Phonetics
is the study of speech and non-speech sounds,
and delves into their acoustic and articulatory
properties. The study of language meaning,
on the other hand, deals with how languages
encode relations between entities, properties,
and other aspects of the world to convey,
process, and assign meaning, as well as manage
and resolve ambiguity. While the study of
semantics typically concerns itself with truth
conditions, pragmatics deals with how situational
context influences the production of meaning.Grammar
is a system of rules which governs the production
and use of utterances in a given language.
These rules apply to sound 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). Modern theories
that deal with the principles of grammar are
largely based within Noam Chomsky's framework
of generative linguistics.In the early 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. This distinction resembles the
one made by Noam Chomsky between competence
and performance in his theory of transformative
or generative grammar. According to Chomsky,
competence is an individual's innate capacity
and potential for language (like in Saussure's
langue), while performance is the specific
way in which it is used by individuals, groups,
and communities (i.e., parole, in Saussurean
terms).The study of parole (which manifests
through cultural discourses and dialects)
is the domain of sociolinguistics, the sub-discipline
that comprises the study of a complex system
of linguistic facets within a certain speech
community (governed by its own set of grammatical
rules and laws). Discourse analysis further
examines the structure of texts and conversations
emerging out of a speech community's usage
of language. This is done through the collection
of linguistic data, or through the formal
discipline of corpus linguistics, which takes
naturally occurring texts and studies the
variation of grammatical and other features
based on such corpora (or corpus data).
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. 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. Palaeography is therefore the discipline
that studies the evolution of written scripts
(as signs and symbols) in language. 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.
Linguistics also deals with the social, cultural,
historical and political factors that influence
language, through which linguistic and language-based
context is often determined. Research on language
through the sub-branches of historical and
evolutionary linguistics also focus on how
languages change and grow, particularly over
an extended period of time.
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.
Related areas of study also includes the disciplines
of semiotics (the study of direct and indirect
language through signs and symbols), literary
criticism (the historical and ideological
analysis of literature, cinema, art, or published
material), translation (the conversion and
documentation of meaning in written/spoken
text from one language or dialect onto another),
and speech-language pathology (a corrective
method to cure phonetic disabilities and dis-functions
at the cognitive level).
== Nomenclature ==
Before the 20th century, the term philology,
first attested in 1716, was commonly used
to refer to the study 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 usual
term in English for the scientific study of
language, though linguistic science is sometimes
used.
Linguistics is a multi-disciplinary field
of research that combines tools from natural
sciences, social sciences, and the humanities.
Many linguists, such as David Crystal, conceptualize
the field as being primarily scientific. 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.
== 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 human languages. 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.
=== Pidgin ===
The pidgin stage in a language is a stage
when communication occurs through a grammatically
simplified means, developing between two or
more groups that do not have a language in
common. Typically, it is a mixture of languages
at the stage when there occurs a mixing between
a primary language with other language elements.
=== Creole ===
A creole stage in language occurs when there
is a stable natural language developed from
a mixture of different languages. It is a
stage that occurs after a language undergoes
its pidgin stage. At the creole stage, a language
is a complete language, used in a community
and acquired by children as their native language.
=== 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.
"We may as individuals be rather fond of our
own dialect. This should not make us think,
though, that it is actually any better than
any other dialect. Dialects are not good or
bad, nice or nasty, right or wrong – they
are just different from one another, and it
is the mark of a civilised society that it
tolerates different dialects just as it tolerates
different races, religions and sexes."
=== Discourse ===
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. 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 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.
=== Standard language ===
When a dialect is documented sufficiently
through the linguistic description of its
grammar, which has emerged through the consensual
laws from within its community, it gains political
and national recognition through a country
or region's policies. That is the stage when
a language is considered a standard variety,
one whose grammatical laws have now stabilised
from within the consent of speech community
participants, after sufficient evolution,
improvisation, correction, and growth. The
English language, besides perhaps the French
language, may be examples of languages that
have arrived at a stage where they are said
to have become standard varieties.
The study of a language's universal properties,
on the other hand, include some of the following
concepts.
=== 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 parts of words that can't 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,
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.
=== 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 criticized
in the media at the time of his death for
his theory of relativism.
== 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). 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.
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.
=== Grammar ===
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
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 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
=== 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. In short, Stylistics is the
interpretation of text.
== Approaches ==
=== Theoretical ===
One major debate in linguistics concerns the
very nature of language and how it should
be understood. Some linguists hypothesize
that there is a module in the human brain
that allows people to undertake linguistic
behaviour, which is part of the formalist
approach. This "universal grammar" is considered
to guide children when they learn language
and to constrain what sentences are considered
grammatical in any human 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).
=== Functional ===
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 theories of grammar, called "functional",
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 emphasized 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 species is "better" or "worse"
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, may be practised appropriately
in the teaching of language, like in ELT,
where certain fundamental grammatical rules
and lexical terms need to be introduced to
a second-language speaker who is attempting
to acquire the language.
=== Anthropology ===
The objective of describing languages is often
to 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 endeavour 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
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 aren't 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;
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, graphemics,
is, in any case, considered a branch of linguistics.
=== 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 Saussurean 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.
== History ==
=== Early grammarians ===
The formal study of language began 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 non-Arab,
made a detailed description of Arabic in AD
760 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 somewhat later
than 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, practised 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 study of language was broadened from Indo-European
to language in general by Wilhelm von Humboldt,
of whom Bloomfield asserts:
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).
=== 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 and 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 formalization 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
Σ
{\displaystyle \Sigma }
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.
=== Cognitive linguistics ===
Cognitive linguistics emerged 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 conceptualization;
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 practised
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.
=== Ecolinguistics ===
Ecolinguistics explores the role of language
in the life-sustaining interactions of humans,
other species and the physical environment.
The first aim is to develop linguistic theories
which see humans not only as part of society,
but also as part of the larger ecosystems
that life depends on. The second aim is to
show how linguistics can be used to address
key ecological issues, from climate change
and biodiversity loss to environmental justice.
=== 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 into is how children acquire
different languages, how adults can acquire
a second language, and what the process of
language acquisition is.
=== 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.
== 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. 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. 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.
== Interdisciplinary 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 emphasize
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. 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 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.
=== 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 organizations,
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, which 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 the biology
and evolution of language. It is a highly
interdisciplinary field, including linguists,
biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists,
mathematicians, and others. By shifting the
focus of investigation in linguistics to a
comprehensive scheme that embraces natural
sciences, it seeks to yield a framework by
which the fundamentals of the faculty of language
are understood.
=== 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
Chaika (1990) showed that people with schizophrenia
who display speech disorders, like rhyming
inappropriately, have attentional dysfunction,
as when a patient, shown a colour chip and
then asked to identify it, responded "looks
like clay. Sounds like gray. Take you for
a roll in the hay. Heyday, May Day." The color
chip was actually clay-colored, so his first
response was correct.'
However, most people suppress or ignore words
which rhyme with what they've said unless
they are deliberately producing a pun, poem
or rap. Even then, the speaker shows connection
between words chosen for rhyme and an overall
meaning in discourse. People with schizophrenia
with speech dysfunction show no such relation
between rhyme and reason. Some even produce
stretches of gibberish combined with recognizable
words.
=== 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 ===
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.
== See also ==
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
Akmajian, Adrian; Demers, Richard; Farmer,
Ann; Harnish, Robert (2010). Linguistics:
An Introduction to Language and Communication.
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-51370-6.
Bloomfield, Leonard (1983) [1914]. An Introduction
to the Study of Language: New edition. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN 90-272-8047-9.
Isac, Daniela; Charles Reiss (2013). I-language:
An Introduction to Linguistics as Cognitive
Science, 2nd edition. Oxford University Press.
ISBN 978-0199660179.
Pinker, Steven (1994). The Language Instinct.
William Morrow and Company. ISBN 9780140175295.
Chomsky, Noam (1998). On Language. The New
Press, New York. ISBN 978-1565844759.
Derrida, Jacques (1967). Of Grammatology.
The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801858305.
Crystal, David (1990). Linguistics. Penguin
Books. ISBN 9780140135312.
Hall, Christopher (2005). An Introduction
to Language and Linguistics. Breaking the
Language Spell. Routledge. ISBN 9780826487346.
== External links ==
The Linguist List, a global online linguistics
community with news and information updated
daily
Glossary of linguistic terms by SIL International
(last updated 2004)
Glottopedia, MediaWiki-based encyclopedia
of linguistics, under construction
Linguistic sub-fields – according to the
Linguistic Society of America
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 edition. Oxford University Press.
ISBN 978-0-19-953420-3.
Linguistics at Curlie
