What is Linguistics?

Linguistics Study 

What is Linguistics?

  Linguistics can be known as systematic or scientific study language. It is a science in the sense that it scientifically studies the principal, systems and rules of human being languages.

Linguists are interested in language as:

– a human phenomenon

– a form of human communication

– a way to study the human mind and brain

– a tool to influence human thought

– a system to shape and reinforce societies and cultures.

Linguistic theory's aims:

Linguistics has two main purposes:

One is that it studies the nature of language and trying to publish a theory of language and 

describes languages the theory published. The second is that it is testing all the forms language in generally and search a scientific understanding of the ways in that it is organized to fulfill the needs it serves and the functions it performs in human life.

Some questions which Linguistic study tries to answer are the following:

How to study and understand the structure of language?

What is knowledge of language? (Competence)

How is language acquired? (Acquisition)

How is knowledge of language put to use? (Performance/language processing).

Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive:

Linguistics is descriptive and describes is that way people talk not the way they should talk. 

This means linguists describe the rules and facts of language specifically as they find them 

without making any judgements. Linguists don't try to impose norms of correctness and do not try to make change the actual usage of the language of the native speakers. This contrasts with the previous view of old grammar which was very strongly prescriptive.

The main of descriptiveness too reflects the present-day view for language change. Before de Saussure, it was held that linguistic study change involves corruption and should be stopped. For modernist linguistics situations that change is a natural process. The task of a linguist is to describe the way people write and speech, that not to tell them how they ought to use language.

Branches of linguistics study:

– Phonetics is the study of how sounds are produced, the production of speech, 

– Phonology is the study of the structure of the sounds system of particular languages.

– Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words, their minimal units of meaning (i.e. morphemes) and of the word-formation processes.

– Syntax is the study structure of sentences.

– Semantics is the study, how the meaning is encoded in a language.

– Pragmatics the study the meaning in context. 

– Psycholinguistics studies the interrelation of language and mind in processing and producing utterances and in language acquisition.

– Sociolinguistics studies the social functions of language and the social 

characteristics of its users. 

– Applied linguistics the application linguistic study societies and theories in 

everyday real-life problems involving language.

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