What is Linguistics?
Linguistics
is, broadly, the scientific study of language, and many topics are
studied
under this umbrella.
At the heart of linguistics is the search for the unconscious knowledge that humans have about language(s), an understanding of the structure of language, and knowledge about how languages differ from each other.
Studying linguistics means learning about many aspects of human language, including the physical properties and structure of
sounds (phonetics and phonology)
words (morphology)
sentences (syntax)
and meaning (semantics)
It also involves looking at how languages change over time (historical linguistics)
how they vary from situation to situation, group to group, and place to place (sociolinguistics and dialectology)
how people use language in context (pragmatics)
how people acquire or learn language (language acquisition)
how language is acquired and processed (psycholinguistics)
how language relates to social and cultural issues, including language learning and teaching (applied linguistics)
the biological/neurological basis of language (neurolinguistics)
its technological applications like speech synthesis and analysis (computational linguistics).
At the heart of linguistics is the search for the unconscious knowledge that humans have about language(s), an understanding of the structure of language, and knowledge about how languages differ from each other.
Studying linguistics means learning about many aspects of human language, including the physical properties and structure of
sounds (phonetics and phonology)
words (morphology)
sentences (syntax)
and meaning (semantics)
It also involves looking at how languages change over time (historical linguistics)
how they vary from situation to situation, group to group, and place to place (sociolinguistics and dialectology)
how people use language in context (pragmatics)
how people acquire or learn language (language acquisition)
how language is acquired and processed (psycholinguistics)
how language relates to social and cultural issues, including language learning and teaching (applied linguistics)
the biological/neurological basis of language (neurolinguistics)
its technological applications like speech synthesis and analysis (computational linguistics).