INTRO TO LINGUISTICS

Introduction to Linguistics

     

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. These rules include phonology, the sound system, morphology , the structure of words, syntax, the combination of words into sentences, semantics, the ways in which sounds and meanings are related, and the lexicon, or mental dictionary of words. When you know a language, you know words in that language, i.e. sound units or signs that are related to specific meanings. However, the sounds or signs and meanings of words are arbitrary. For the most part, there is no relationship between the way a word is pronounced (or signed) and its meaning.

The Branches of Linguistics
1. Micro Linguistics 
Micro linguistic is narrower view. It is concerned internal view of language itself (structure of language systems) without related to other sciences and without related how to apply it in daily life. Some fields of micro linguistic:

Phonetics - the study of the acoustics and sounds of languages

A phonetician might, for example, look at how stress manifests in a language.

In English, the stressed word in a normal sentence is louder and higher pitched: “ANna likes bananas.” If we ask a question though, it’s pronounced with a lower pitch: “ANna likes bananas?”

Phonology - the study of sound systems and how they pattern

For example, in English, there are many examples of t's in the middle of words that sound quite different from t's at the beginning or end of words. Listen to the t's in "toted" and you’ll hear that they don’t sound the same. The first t is pronounced with a puff of air (put your hand in front of your mouth to check this) but the second is not and it sounds like the d in “coded.” This sound is called a tap because your tongue taps the roof of your mouth briefly and it is very similar to the tapped r sound in languages like Spanish or Japanese (this leads to misperceptions of the English middle t as an r for speakers of these languages).

Syntax - the study of sentence structure

English and many western European languages have a phenomenon called “wh-movement.” wh-words are the question words who, which, what, where, when, why, and how. Think about the sentence “I eat an apple” as a possible response to the question “What do you eat?” The word what corresponds to apple, but it shows up at the beginning of the sentence.

In many languages, though, the wh-word corresponds to the same position as the word it refers to. For example, in Chinese you would say “I eat apple” in response to “You eat what?” We say then that in languages like English, wh-movement has occurred and the structure is: “What do you eat what?” A lot of other properties of a language are predicted by whether it has wh-movement or not, but we’ll have to leave those to another time!

Semantics - the study of meaning and formalizing it into a logical form

English and many western European languages have a phenomenon called “wh-movement.” wh-words are the question words who, which, what, where, when, why, and how. Think about the sentence “I eat an apple” as a possible response to the question “What do you eat?” The word what corresponds to apple, but it shows up at the beginning of the sentence. In many languages, though, the wh-word corresponds to the same position (called in-situ) as the word it refers to. For example, in Chinese you would say “I eat apple” in response to “You eat what?” We say then that in languages like English, wh-movement has occurred and the structure is:

In English, the wh-word moves to the front of the sentence (why “do” appears in questions is another issue that I don’t have room to tackle here). A lot of other properties of a language are predicted by whether it has wh-movement or not, but we’ll have to leave those to another time

2. Macro Linguistics

Macro linguistic is broadest view of language. It is concerned external view of language itself with related to other sciences and how to apply it in daily life. Some fields of micro linguistic:

a. Stylistics, the study of linguistic factors that place a discourse in context.

b. Developmental linguistics, the study of the development of linguistic ability in an individual, particularly the acquisition of language in childhood.

c. Historical linguistics or Diachronic linguistics, the study of language change.

d. Language geography, the study of the spatial patterns of languages.

e. Evolutionary linguistics, the study of the origin and subsequent development of language.

f. Psycholinguistics, the study of the cognitive processes and representations underlying language use.

g. Sociolinguistics, the study of social patterns and norms of linguistic variability.

h. Clinical linguistics, the application of linguistic theory to the area of Speech-Language Pathology.

i. Neurolinguistics, the study of the brain networks that underlie grammar and communication.

j. Biolinguistics, the study of natural as well as human-taught communication systems in animals compared to human language.

I hope that this article can help you and if I make a mistake  I am sorry. :)