ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING FORUM

Monday, March 16, 2009

Scope of linguistics
INTRODUCTION
The use of language is an integral part of being human. Children all over the
world start putting words together at approximately the same age, and follow
remarkably similar paths in their speech development. All languages are
surprisingly similar in their basic structure, whether they are in South Africa,
Australia or near the North Pole. Language and abstract thought are closely
connected, and many people think that these two characteristics above all
distinguish human beings from animals.
WHAT IS LINGUISTICS?
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It encompasses the description of
languages, the study of their origin, and the analysis of how children acquire
language and how people learn languages other than their own. Linguistics is
also concerned with relationships between languages and with the ways
languages change over time. Linguists may study language as a thought process
and seek a theory that accounts for the universal human capacity to produce and
understand language. Some linguists examine language within a cultural
context. By observing talk, they try to determine what a person needs to know in
order to speak appropriately in different settings, such as the workplace, among
friends, or among family. Other linguists focus on what happens when speakers
from different language and cultural backgrounds interact. Linguists may also
concentrate on how to help people learn another language, using what they
know about the learner's first language and about the language being acquired.
SCOPE OF LINGUISTICS
Linguistics covers a wide range of topics and its boundaries are difficult to define.
The famous Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, in his book The course in
General Linguistics (Cours de Linguistique Generale) published in 1916, gave a
rough impression of the range covered by Linguistics in the shape of a wheel.
The description of the wheel is as below.
Phonetics
The study speech sounds is called Phonetics. Strictly speaking, phonetics is not
the part of linguistics, though of course there are close connections between the
two disciplines. Phoneticians investigate such topics as the anatomical,
physiological and neurological basis of speech (physiological phonetics), the
actions of the speech organs in producing speech sounds (articulatory

phonetics), the acoustic nature of the sound waves which transmit speech
(acoustics phonetics), and the manners in which the ears and brain interpret
speech (auditory and perceptual phonetics). Linguists, on the other hand are
more interested in the way in which language is patterned. They analyse the
shape or form of these patterns rather than the physical substance out of which
the units of language are made. Phonetics is not as central to general linguistics
as the study of language patterning.
Phonology
According to Loreto Todd Phonology is the study of sounds and sound
combinations in a particular language. Whereas phonetics is chiefly concerned
with the physical nature of speech sounds, and hence is not strictly a part of
linguistics, phonology deals with the ways in which sounds behave in language,
and it is a central part of linguistics. The central concept in the phonological
approach is the phoneme principle which allows linguists to understand the
sounds of a language as constituting an orderly system, instead of being a mere
collection of individual sounds.
Syntax
According to Loreto Todd The form and arrangement of words into larger units
such as phrases, clauses, sentences etc is called syntax. R.L.Trask defines it as
the sentence structure. It is that part of language which links together the sound
patterns and the meanings Knowledge of syntactic system allows the speaker to
generate an almost endless number of sentences and to recognize those that are
not grammatically acceptable.
Semantics
Semantics refers to the study of meaning in language. Word meanings are
complicated to learn; words are related to one another in complex networks, and
awareness of words comes later than does word use. Under the subject of
semantics the such areas of interest are dealt, as the fact that a word can have
more than one meaning, different words appear to have the same meaning,
some words seem to have opposites, the meaning of some words are included in
the meaning of others and the certain combinations of words have meanings
which are very different from the combination of their separate meanings etc.
Phonology, syntax and semantics are the bread and butter of linguistics, and
together they constitute the grammar of a language.
GRAMMAR
Syntax
Semantics
Phonology

Pragmatics
According to Jean Berko Gleason Pragmatics refers to the use of language to
express ones intentions and getting done in the world. Pragmatics is the branch
of linguistics, which studies how utterances communicate meaning in context. It
includes the study of how the interpretation and the use of utterances depend on
the knowledge of the real word, how speakers use and understand speech acts,
and how the structure of the sentences is influenced by the relationship of the
speaker and the hearer.
Socio Linguistics
Socio linguistics concentrates on language in society. In other words, it tries to
examine how and why people use language as they interact with other members
of their society. It examines variety in language and shows that language is not
merely used to communicate ideas but also to communicate our opinions of
others and of ourselves. In considering any spoken communication, we notice
that a speaker's language reveals information on his sex, approximate age,
regional and perhaps ethnic origins, education and attitude to his listeners.
Socio-linguists thus set themselves the tasks of examining language use, its
variation, its development, change and standardization, its regional and class
dialects, its lingua francas, its specialized codes.
Anthropological Linguistics
Anthropological linguistics, also known as linguistic anthropology, uses linguistic
approaches to analyze culture. Anthropological linguists examine the
relationship between a culture and its language, the way cultures and languages
have changed over time, and how different cultures and languages are related to
one another.
Philosophical Linguistics
Philosophical linguistics examines the philosophy of language that is the link
between language and logical thought. Philosophers of language search for the
grammatical principles and tendencies that all human languages share. Among
the concerns of linguistic philosophers is the range of possible word order
combinations throughout the world. One finding is that 95 percent of the world's
languages use a subject-verb-object (SVO) order as English does ("She pushed
the bush."). Only 5 percent use a subject-object-verb (SOV) order or verbsubject-object (VSO) order.
Stylistics
The study of the aesthetic uses of languages, particularly the use of language in
literature is called stylistics. Stylistics exploits our knowledge of linguistics
variety, our awareness of the appropriateness of certain combinations and
provides us with the tools necessary to deepen our awareness of literature. It is
not, however, an alternative to sensitive intuition, but a means of exploring and
reinforcing such intuition.

Computational Linguistics
Computational linguistics involves the use of computers to compile linguistic
data, analyze languages, translate from one language to another, and develop
and test models of language processing. Linguists use computers and large
samples of actual language to analyze the relatedness and the structure of
languages and to look for patterns and similarities. Computers also aid in stylistic
studies, information retrieval, various forms of textual analysis, and the
construction of dictionaries and concordances. Applying computers to language
studies has resulted in machine translation systems and machines that recognize
and produce speech and text.
Applied Linguistics
The application of the concepts and methods of linguistics to any of various
problems involving language is known an applied linguistics. Applied linguistics
is the collective term for the various applications such as foreign language
teaching, lexicography, translation, speech pathology and therapy, error
analysis, etc.
Psycho Linguistics
The study of the relationship between language and the mind focusing mainly
on how language is learnt, stored and occasionally lost is known as psycho
linguistics. Psycholinguists also attempt to understand dysphasia (literally 'bad
speech'), dyslexia (word blindness) and aphasia (the sudden or gradual loss of
language due to age, an accident or a stroke).
Various branches of linguistics overlap to some extent so are hard to define
clearly. Psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics have expanded fastest in recent
years. Finally two aspects of linguistics have been omitted from the diagram. The
first is historical linguistics, the study of language change. This omission was
inevitable in a two dimensional diagram. But if the wheel diagram is regarded as
three dimensional, like that of the cross-section of a tree, the topic can be
included. We can either look at a grammar at one particular point in time (a
single cut across the tree) or we can study its developments over a number of
years, by comparing a number of different cuts made across the tree trunk at
different places, shown in the figure. Because it is necessary to know how a
system works at any one time before one can hope to under stand changes, the
analysis of language at a single point in time, or synchronic linguistics, is usually
dealt with before historical or diachronic linguistics.
The second omission is linguistic typology, the study of different language types.
This could not be fitted in because it spreads over several layers of the diagram,
covering phonology, syntax, and semantics.
Posted by saimayaqub2009 at 6:58 AM
1 comment:

Faisal SajjadDecember 13, 2015 at 11:49 AM

good,

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I am Saima Yaqub, always in search of knowledge and information, English
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