Hey! It's possible that you have not
heard much about linguistics before. If
so, that's totally fine.
I just want to tell you a little bit
about what linguistics is all about.
In linguistics, we are interested in how
people actually use language, just
ordinary spoken language. For example,
they might say "you gonna finish those fries?" We
are interested in patterns that people
follow naturally
in order to speak in the same way as
other people in their community do.
Notice that if somebody said "gonna you
finish those fries", that would be deeply
strange. That just doesn't happen.
I've indicated that by putting an
asterisk on it.
So the fact that "you gonna finish
those fries?"
is normal and "gonna you finish those
fries?"
is not means that there is a pattern
that people follow in a given community. In fact, this is a RULE in that community,
a natural rule that people
follow. Say "you gonna finish those fries",
don't say "gonna you finish those fries".
we are also interested in the linguistic
details that vary from one community to
another.
For example, in some communities people
might say
"you finna finish those fries?"
And we are interested in what speakers
accomplish socially when using
certain words or phrases or pronouncing
things a certain way or choosing a
certain sentence structure. So "you gonna  finish those fries",
for example,
could very easily function as a request
for fries, even though the words
themselves don't spell that out.
In linguistics, we investigate everything
about language.
Sounds, for example. [æ]
We also investigate sound systems, for
example, the fact that
in English you could say –notice that
middle sound there– you could say
"water" or "water", "water",
"water", so two different sounds in the
middle of that word.
In English, whichever one you say,
you would be saying the word- the same
word, just
sounding differently. But in some other
language those two
sounds may count as two very different
sounds,
not interchangeable, so these two
languages have different
sound systems. We are also interested in
the internal structure of words.
For example, "unlockable" has three chunks
in it, "un", "lock",
and "able" We also study sentence structure.
Here, for example, this tree
shows that the phrase "in Morocco" occurs
inside the phrase "lives in Morocco".
We are also interested in the structure
of chunks of language
beyond one sentence, longer stretches
forming a discourse. And we are
interested, of course, in the meaning
of words, the meaning of phrases and
sentences,
such as the fact that "bat" can have
different meanings. We also consider how
different elements of a conversational
context influence how people interpret
what others say:
you may be able to think of different
situations where
"can I help you?" means different things,
or functions
in different ways to accomplish
different purposes.
It's not always the same.
We are also very interested in the
mystery of how
children acquire language. This is a deep
and important topic.
On a related point, we're also interested
in what happens in our brains
while listening to someone else speak
and making sense of it
and while producing speech of our own.
So this has given you some idea of
what linguistics is all about.
