Introduction to Linguistics

Hey , this is my second post . In here , i would like to explain to you all about linguistics based on the articles I've read before . Hope this post will useful for you !

What is Linguistics?
 Linguistics is the science of language, including the sounds or signs, words, and grammar rules. Words in languages are finite, but sentences are not. It is this creative aspect of human language that sets it apart from animal languages, which are essentially responses to stimuli.

 The rules of a language, also called grammar, are learned as one acquires a language. Knowing a language encompasses this entire system, but this knowledge (called competence) is different from behavior (called performance). You may know a language, but you may also choose to not speak it. Although you are not speaking the language, you still have the knowledge of it. However, if you don’t know a language, you cannot speak it at all.

Here , I will explain to you all about some branches in linguistics :
a . Phonetics
 There are three types of the study of the sounds of language. Acoustic Phonetics is the study of the physical properties of sounds. Auditory Phonetics is the study of the way listeners perceive sounds. Articulatory Phonetics  is the study of how the vocal tracts produce the sounds. This article will only describe articulatory phonetics. The orthography (spelling) of words in misleading, especially in English. One sound can be represented by several different combinations of letters

b.Phonology
 Whereas phonetics is the study of sounds and is concerned with the production, audition and perception of of speech sounds (called phones), phonology describes the way sounds function within a given language and operates at the level of sound systems and abstract sound units. Knowing the sounds of a language is only a small part of phonology. This importance is shown by the fact that you can change one word into another by simply changing one sound. Consider the differences between the words time and dime. The words are identical except for the first sound. [t] and [d] can therefore distinguish words, and are called contrasting sounds. They are distinctive sounds in English, and all distinctive sounds are classified as phonemes.

c.Morphology
 Morphology is the study of words. Morphemes are the minimal units of words that have a meaning and cannot be subdivided further. There are two main types: free and bound. Free morphemes can occur alone and bound morphemes must occur with another morpheme. An example of a free morpheme is “bad”, and an example of a bound morpheme is “ly.” It is bound because although it has meaning, it cannot stand alone. It must be attached to another morpheme to produce a word.

d.Syntax
 Syntax refers to word order and depends on lexical categories (parts of speech.) You probably learned that there are eight main parts of speech in grammar school. Linguistics takes a different approach to these categories and separates words into morphological and syntactic groups. Linguistics analyzes words according to their affixes and the words that follow or precede them. Hopefully, the following definitions of the parts of speech will make more sense and be more useful than the old definitions of grammar school books.

e.Semantics
 Semantics is concerned with the meanings of words and the meaning of relationships among words, while phrasal semantics is concerned with the meaning of syntactic units larger than the word. Semantic properties are the components of meanings of words. For example, the semantic property “human” can be found in many words such as parent, doctor, baby, professor, widow, and aunt. Other semantic properties include animate objects, male, female, countable items and non-countable items.

f.Pragmatics
 Pragmatics is the study of how context affects meaning, such as how sentences are interpreted in certain situations (or the interpretation of linguistic meaning in context). Linguistic context is discourse that precedes a sentence to be interpreted and situational context is knowledge about the world. In the following sentences, the kids have eaten already and surprisingly, they are hungry, the linguistic context helps to interpret the second sentence depending on what the first sentence says. The situational context helps to interpret the second sentence because it is common knowledge that humans are not usually hungry after eating.

g.Sociolinguistics
 Sociolinguistics refers to the way language is used in society. A dialect is a variety of language that is systematically different from other varieties of the same language. The dialects of a single language are mutually intelligible, but when the speakers can no longer understand each other, the dialects become languages. Geographical regions are also considered when dialects become languages. Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish are all considered separate languages because of regular differences in grammar and the countries in which they are spoken, yet Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes can all understand one another to a large extent. Hindi and Urdu are considered mutually intelligible languages when spoken, yet the writing systems are different. On the other hand, Mandarin and Cantonese are mutually unintelligible languages when spoken, yet the writing systems are the same.

h.Historical Linguistics
 The study of linguistic change is called historical and comparative linguistics. Linguists identify regular sound correspondences using the comparative method among the cognates (words that developed from the same ancestral language) of related languages. They can restructure an earlier protolanguage and this allows linguists to determine the history of a language family. Linguistic changes like sound shift is found in the history of all languages, as evidenced by the regular sound correspondences that exist between different stages of the same language, different dialects, and different languages. Words, morphemes, and phonemes may be altered, added or lost. The meaning of words may broaden, narrow or shift. New words may be introduced into a language by borrowing, or by coinage, blends and acronyms. The lexicon may also shrink as older words become obsolete.

i.Lexicology
 Lexicology (from Gr lexis “word” and logos “learning”) is a part of linguistics dealing with the vocabulary of a language and the properties of words as the main units of the language. It also studies all kinds of semantic grouping and semantic relations: synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, semantic fields, etc.

Conclusion : 

Linguistics is the scientific study of language,Certainly it is about communication, but language is also about constructing meaning (power, influence etc.), and it is this “way of seeing” that informs everything that linguists do.

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