Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of language and its structure. It involves analysing language form, language meaning, and language in context. Linguists traditionally analyse human language by observing an interplay between sound and meaning.

History of Linguistics

The study of linguistics dates back to ancient times with the Sanskrit grammarians of ancient India, particularly Pāṇini, who formulated 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology. Linguistics began to be studied systematically by the philosophers of ancient Greece, such as Plato and Aristotle.

Branches of Linguistics

Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context.

Phonetics

Phonetics is the study of physical sounds (or phonemes). It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds (also known as phonemes), and the processes of their physiological production, auditory reception, and neurophysiological perception.

Syntax

Syntax is the study of how words combine to form grammatical sentences. It involves the study of grammatical structures and the rules that govern them.

Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning. It can be applied to entire texts or to single words. It is often divided into 'lexical semantics' (the meaning of words) and 'grammatical semantics' (the meaning of grammatical structures).

Pragmatics

Pragmatics is the study of how context influences the way language is interpreted. This can include both the social context and the conceptual context.

Applied Linguistics

Applied linguistics involves the practical application of linguistic research, such as language education, translation, and computer language processing.

See Also

• Sociolinguistics
• Psycholinguistics
• Neurolinguistics
• Computational Linguistics