Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of language.[1] It involves the analysis of language

form, language meaning, and language in context.[2] Linguists traditionally analyse
human language by observing an interplay between sound and meaning.[3]
Linguistics also deals with the social, cultural, historical, and political factors that
influence language, through which linguistic and language-based context is often
determined.[4] Research on language through the sub-branches of historical and
evolutionary linguistics also focuses on how languages change and grow, particularly
over an extended period of time.

The earliest activities in the documentation and description of language have been
attributed to the 6th-century-BC Indian grammarian Pāṇini[5][6] who wrote a formal
description of the Sanskrit language in his Aṣṭādhyāyī.[7]

Related areas of study include the disciplines of semiotics (the study of direct and
indirect language through signs and symbols), literary criticism (the historical and
ideological analysis of literature, cinema, art, or published material), translation (the
conversion and documentation of meaning in written/spoken text from one language
or dialect onto another), and speech-language pathology (a corrective method to
cure phonetic disabilities and dis-functions at the cognitive level).

Contents
Major subdisciplines
Historical linguistics
Syntax and morphology
Semantics and pragmatics
Phonetics and phonology
Language varieties
Contact varieties
Dialect
Standard language
Relativity
Structures
Grammar
Discourse
Lexicon
Style
Approaches
Humanistic
Biological
Methodology
Anthropology
Sources
Analysis
History
Nomenclature
Early grammarians
Comparative philology
20th century developments
Areas of research
Ecolinguistics
Sociolinguistics
Developmental linguistics
Neurolinguistics
Applied linguistics
Semiotics
Language documentation
Translation
Clinical linguistics
Computational linguistics
Evolutionary linguistics
Forensic linguistics
See also
References
Bibliography
External links

Major subdisciplines

Historical linguistics

Historical linguistics is the study of language change over time particularly with
regards to a specific language or group of languages. Historical linguistics was
among the first sub-disciplines to emerge in linguistics, and was the most widely
practised form of linguistics in the late 19th century. There was a shift of focus in the
early twentieth century to the synchronic approach (the systemic study of the
current stage in languages), but historical research remained a field of linguistic
inquiry. Subfields include language change and grammaticalisation studies.

Western modern historical linguistics dates from the late 18th century. It grew out of
the earlier discipline of philology,[8] the study of ancient texts and documents dating
back to antiquity.

At first, historical linguistics served as the cornerstone of comparative linguistics

 Although it may not seem obvious at first, the first name John shares a common origin
with Shaun, Eoin, Ian, Juan, Ivan, and Yahya. More surprisingly, the Catalan words Joan
‹John› and xoni ‹Vulgar girl› are also related. They are all come from the Biblical Hebrew
phrase God is gracious, over 30 centuries of evolution. Historical linguistics tries to
analyze such changes and their links, and even recreate disappeared forms through
comparing those that are known.

primarily as a tool for linguistic reconstruction.[9] Scholars were concerned chiefly

with establishing language families and reconstructing prehistoric proto-languages,
using the comparative method and internal reconstruction.[9] The focus was initially
on the well-known Indo-European languages, many of which had long written
histories; the scholars also studied the Uralic languages, another European language
family for which less early written material exists. Since then, there has been
significant comparative linguistic work expanding outside of European languages as
well, such as on the Austronesian languages and various families of Native American
languages, among many others. Comparative linguistics is now, however, only a part
of a more broadly conceived discipline of historical linguistics. For the Indo-
European languages, comparative study is now a highly specialized field. Most
research is being carried out on the subsequent development of these languages, in
particular, the development of the modern standard varieties.

Some scholars have undertaken studies attempting to establish super-families,

linking, for example, Indo-European, Uralic, and other families into Nostratic. These
attempts have not been accepted widely. The information necessary to establish
relatedness becomes less available as the time depth is increased. The time-depth of
linguistic methods is limited due to chance word resemblances and variations
between language groups, but a limit of around 10,000 years is often assumed.[10]
The dating of the various proto-languages is also difficult; several methods are
available for dating, but only approximate results can be obtained.

Syntax and morphology

Syntax and morphology are branches of linguistics concerned with the order and
structure of meaningful linguistic units such as words and morphemes. Syntacticians
study the rules and constraints that govern how speakers of a language can organize
words into sentences. Morphologists study similar rules for the order of morphemes
—sub-word units such as prefixes and suffixes—and how they may be combined to
form words.

While words, along with clitics, are generally accepted as being the smallest units of
syntax, in most languages, if not all, many words can be related to other words by
rules that collectively describe the grammar for that language. For example, English
speakers recognize that the words dog and dogs are closely related, differentiated
only by the plurality morpheme "-s", only found bound to noun phrases. Speakers of
English, a fusional language, recognize these relations from their innate knowledge
of English's rules of word formation. They infer intuitively that dog is to dogs as cat
is to cats; and, in similar fashion, dog is to dog catcher as dish is to dishwasher. By
contrast, Classical Chinese has very little morphology, using almost exclusively
unbound morphemes ("free" morphemes) and depending on word order to convey
meaning. (Most words in modern Standard Chinese ["Mandarin"], however, are
compounds and most roots are bound.) These are understood as grammars that
represent the morphology of the language. The rules understood by a speaker reflect
specific patterns or regularities in the way words are formed from smaller units in
the language they are using, and how those smaller units interact in speech. In this
way, morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies patterns of word formation
within and across languages and attempts to formulate rules that model the
knowledge of the speakers of those languages.

Phonological and orthographic modifications between a base word and its origin may
be partial to literacy skills. Studies have indicated that the presence of modification
in phonology and orthography makes morphologically complex words harder to
understand and that the absence of modification between a base word and its origin
makes morphologically complex words easier to understand. Morphologically
complex words are easier to comprehend when they include a base word.[11]

Polysynthetic languages, such as Chukchi, have words composed of many

morphemes. The Chukchi word "təmeyŋəlevtpəγtərkən", for example, meaning "I
have a fierce headache", is composed of eight morphemes t-ə-meyŋ-ə-levt-pəγt-ə-rkən
that may be glossed. The morphology of such languages allows for each consonant
and vowel to be understood as morphemes, while the grammar of the language
indicates the usage and understanding of each morpheme.

The discipline that deals specifically with the sound changes occurring within
morphemes is morphophonology.

Semantics and pragmatics

Semantics and pragmatics are branches of linguistics concerned with meaning.

These subfields have traditionally been divided by the role of linguistic and social
context in the determination of meaning. Semantics in this conception is concerned
with core meanings and pragmatics concerned with meaning in context. Pragmatics
encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and
other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, linguistics and
anthropology.[12] Unlike semantics, which examines meaning that is conventional or
"coded" in a given language, pragmatics studies how the transmission of meaning
depends not only on structural and linguistic knowledge (grammar, lexicon, etc.) of
the speaker and listener but also on the context of the utterance,[13] any pre-existing
knowledge about those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, and other
factors.[14] In that respect, pragmatics explains how language users are able to
overcome apparent ambiguity since meaning relies on the manner, place, time, etc.
of an utterance.[12][15]

Phonetics and phonology

Phonetics and phonology are branches of linguistics concerned with sounds (or the
equivalent aspects of sign languages). Phonetics is largely concerned with the
physical aspects of sounds such as their acoustics, production, and perception.
Phonology is concerned with the linguistic abstractions and categorizations of
sounds.

Language varieties
Languages exist on a wide continuum of conventionalization with blurry divisions
between concepts such as dialects and languages. Languages can undergo internal
changes which lead to the development of subvarieties such as linguistic registers,
accents, and dialects. Similarly, languages can undergo changes caused by contact
with speakers of other languages, and new language varieties may be born from
these contact situations through the process of language genesis.

Contact varieties

Contact varieties such as pidgins and creoles are language varieties that often arise
in situations of sustained contact between communities that speak different
languages. Pidgins are language varieties with limited conventionalization where
ideas are conveyed through simplified grammars that may grow more complex as
linguistic contact continues. Creole languages are language varieties similar to
pidgins but with greater conventionalization and stability. As children grow up in
contact situations, they may learn a local pidgin as their native language. Through
this process of acquisition and transmission, new grammatical features and lexical
items are created and introduced to fill gaps in the pidgin eventually developing into
a complete language.

Not all language contact situations result in the development of a pidgin or creole,
and researchers have studied the features of contact situations that make contact
varieties more likely to develop. Often these varieties arise in situations of
colonization and enslavement, where power imbalances prevent the contact groups
from learning the other's language but sustained contact is nevertheless maintained.
The subjugated language in the power relationship is the substrate language, while
the dominant language serves as the superstrate. Often the words and lexicon of a
contact variety come from the superstrate, making it the lexifier, while grammatical
structures come from the substrate, but this is not always the case.[16]

Dialect
A dialect is a variety of language that is characteristic of a particular group among
the language's speakers.[17] The group of people who are the speakers of a dialect
are usually bound to each other by social identity. This is what differentiates a dialect
from a register or a discourse, where in the latter case, cultural identity does not
always play a role. Dialects are speech varieties that have their own grammatical and
phonological rules, linguistic features, and stylistic aspects, but have not been given
an official status as a language. Dialects often move on to gain the status of a
language due to political and social reasons. Other times, dialects remain
marginalized, particularly when they are associated with marginalized social
groups.[18] Differentiation amongst dialects (and subsequently, languages) is based
upon the use of grammatical rules, syntactic rules, and stylistic features, though not
always on lexical use or vocabulary. The popular saying that "a language is a dialect
with an army and navy" is attributed as a definition formulated by Max Weinreich.

"We may as individuals be rather fond of our own dialect. This should not
make us think, though, that it is actually any better than any other dialect.
Dialects are not good or bad, nice or nasty, right or wrong – they are just
different from one another, and it is the mark of a civilised society that it
tolerates different dialects just as it tolerates different races, religions and
sexes."[19]

Standard language

When a dialect is documented sufficiently through the linguistic description of its

grammar, which has emerged through the consensual laws from within its
community, it gains political and national recognition through a country or region's
policies. That is the stage when a language is considered a standard variety, one
whose grammatical laws have now stabilised from within the consent of speech
community participants, after sufficient evolution, improvisation, correction, and
growth. The English language, besides perhaps the French language, may be
examples of languages that have arrived at a stage where they are said to have
become standard varieties.

Relativity

As constructed popularly through the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, relativists believe that

the structure of a particular language is capable of influencing the cognitive patterns
through which a person shapes his or her world view. Universalists believe that
there are commonalities between human perception as there is in the human
capacity for language, while relativists believe that this varies from language to
language and person to person. While the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is an elaboration
of this idea expressed through the writings of American linguists Edward Sapir and
Benjamin Lee Whorf, it was Sapir's student Harry Hoijer who termed it thus. The
20th century German linguist Leo Weisgerber also wrote extensively about the
theory of relativity. Relativists argue for the case of differentiation at the level of
cognition and in semantic domains. The emergence of cognitive linguistics in the
1980s also revived an interest in linguistic relativity. Thinkers like George Lakoff
have argued that language reflects different cultural metaphors, while the French
philosopher of language Jacques Derrida's writings, especially about
deconstruction,[20] have been seen to be closely associated with the relativist
movement in linguistics, for which he was heavily criticized in the media at the time
of his death.[21]

Structures
Linguistic structures are pairings of meaning and form. Any particular pairing of
meaning and form is a Saussurean sign. For instance, the meaning "cat" is
represented worldwide with a wide variety of different sound patterns (in oral
languages), movements of the hands and face (in sign languages), and written
symbols (in written languages). Linguistic patterns have proven their importance for
the knowledge engineering field especially with the ever-increasing amount of
available data.

Linguists focusing on structure attempt to understand the rules regarding language

use that native speakers know (not always consciously). All linguistic structures can
be broken down into component parts that are combined according to (sub)conscious
rules, over multiple levels of analysis. For instance, consider the structure of the
word "tenth" on two different levels of analysis. On the level of internal word
structure (known as morphology), the word "tenth" is made up of one linguistic form
indicating a number and another form indicating ordinality. The rule governing the
combination of these forms ensures that the ordinality marker "th" follows the
number "ten." On the level of sound structure (known as phonology), structural
analysis shows that the "n" sound in "tenth" is made differently from the "n" sound in
"ten" spoken alone. Although most speakers of English are consciously aware of the
rules governing internal structure of the word pieces of "tenth", they are less often
aware of the rule governing its sound structure. Linguists focused on structure find
and analyze rules such as these, which govern how native speakers use language.

Grammar

Grammar is a system of rules which governs the production and use of utterances in
a given language. These rules apply to sound[22] as well as meaning, and include
componential subsets of rules, such as those pertaining to phonology (the
organisation of phonetic sound systems), morphology (the formation and composition
of words), and syntax (the formation and composition of phrases and sentences).[23]
Modern frameworks that deal with the principles of grammar include structural and
functional linguistics, and generative linguistics.[24]

Sub-fields that focus on a grammatical study of language include the following.

Phonetics, the study of the physical properties of speech sound production and
perception, and delves into their acoustic and articulatory properties
Phonology, the study of sounds as abstract elements in the speaker's mind that
distinguish meaning (phonemes)
Morphology, the study of morphemes, or the internal structures of words and how
they can be modified
Syntax, the study of how words combine to form grammatical phrases and
sentences
 Semantics, the study of the meaning of words (lexical semantics) and fixed word
combinations (phraseology), and how these combine to form the meanings of
sentences as well as manage and resolve ambiguity.[25]
Pragmatics, the study of how utterances are used in communicative acts, and the
role played by situational context and non-linguistic knowledge in the transmission
of meaning [26]
Discourse analysis, the analysis of language use in texts (spoken, written, or
signed)
Stylistics, the study of linguistic factors (rhetoric, diction, stress) that place a
discourse in context
Semiotics, the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication,
designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and
communication

Discourse

Discourse is language as social practice (Baynham, 1995) and is a multilayered

concept. As a social practice, discourse embodies different ideologies through
written and spoken texts. Discourse analysis can examine or expose these ideologies.
Discourse influences genre, which is chosen in response to different situations and
finally, at micro level, discourse influences language as text (spoken or written) at
the phonological or lexico-grammatical level. Grammar and discourse are linked as
parts of a system.[27] A particular discourse becomes a language variety when it is
used in this way for a particular purpose, and is referred to as a register.[28] There
may be certain lexical additions (new words) that are brought into play because of
the expertise of the community of people within a certain domain of specialization.
Registers and discourses therefore differentiate themselves through the use of
vocabulary, and at times through the use of style too. People in the medical
fraternity, for example, may use some medical terminology in their communication
that is specialized to the field of medicine. This is often referred to as being part of
the "medical discourse", and so on.

Lexicon

The lexicon is a catalogue of words and terms that are stored in a speaker's mind.
The lexicon consists of words and bound morphemes, which are parts of words that
can't stand alone, like affixes. In some analyses, compound words and certain classes
of idiomatic expressions and other collocations are also considered to be part of the
lexicon. Dictionaries represent attempts at listing, in alphabetical order, the lexicon
of a given language; usually, however, bound morphemes are not included.
Lexicography, closely linked with the domain of semantics, is the science of mapping
the words into an encyclopedia or a dictionary. The creation and addition of new
words (into the lexicon) is called coining or neologization,[29] and the new words are
called neologisms.

It is often believed that a speaker's capacity for language lies in the quantity of
words stored in the lexicon. However, this is often considered a myth by linguists.
The capacity for the use of language is considered by many linguists to lie primarily
in the domain of grammar, and to be linked with competence, rather than with the
growth of vocabulary. Even a very small lexicon is theoretically capable of producing
an infinite number of sentences.

Style

Stylistics also involves the study of written, signed, or spoken discourse through
varying speech communities, genres, and editorial or narrative formats in the mass
media.[30] It involves the study and interpretation of texts for aspects of their
linguistic and tonal style. Stylistic analysis entails the analysis of description of
particular dialects and registers used by speech communities. Stylistic features
include rhetoric,[31] diction, stress, satire, irony, dialogue, and other forms of
phonetic variations. Stylistic analysis can also include the study of language in
canonical works of literature, popular fiction, news, advertisements, and other forms
of communication in popular culture as well. It is usually seen as a variation in
communication that changes from speaker to speaker and community to community.
In short, Stylistics is the interpretation of text.

In the 1960s, Jacques Derrida, for instance, further distinguished between speech
and writing, by proposing that written language be studied as a linguistic medium of
communication in itself.[32] Palaeography is therefore the discipline that studies the
evolution of written scripts (as signs and symbols) in language.[33] The formal study
of language also led to the growth of fields like psycholinguistics, which explores the
representation and function of language in the mind; neurolinguistics, which studies
language processing in the brain; biolinguistics, which studies the biology and
evolution of language; and language acquisition, which investigates how children
and adults acquire the knowledge of one or more languages.

Approaches

Humanistic

A semiotic tradition of linguistic research considers language a sign system which

arises as from the interaction of meaning and form.[34] The organisation of linguistic
levels is considered computational.[35] Linguistics is essentially seen as relating to
social and cultural studies because different languages are shaped in social
interaction by the speech community.[36] Frameworks representing the humanistic
view of language include structural linguistics, among others.

Structural analysis means dissecting each linguistic level: phonetic, morphological,

syntactic, and discourse, to the smallest units. These are collected into inventories
(e.g. phoneme, morpheme and lexical classes, and phrase types) to study their
interconnectedness within a hierarchy of structures and layers.[37] Functional
analysis adds to structural analysis the assignment of semantic and other functional
roles that each unit may have. For example, a noun phrase may function as the
subject or object of the sentence; or the agent or patient.[38]

Functional linguistics, or functional grammar, is a branch of structural linguistics. In

the humanistic reference, the terms structuralism and functionalism are related to
their meaning in other human sciences. The difference between formal and
functional structuralism lies in the way that the two approaches explain why
languages have the properties they have. Functional explanation entails the idea that
language is a tool for communication, or that communication is the primary function
of language. Linguistic forms are consequently explained by an appeal to their
functional value, or usefulness. Other structuralist approaches take the perspective
that form follows from the inner mechanisms of the binary or multilayered language
system.[39]

Biological

Other linguistics frameworks take as their starting point the notion that language is
a biological phenomenon in humans. Generative Grammar is the study of an innate
linguistic structure.[40] In contrast to structural linguistics, Generative Grammar
rejects the notions that meaning or social interaction affects language.[41] Instead,
all human languages are based on a crystallised structure which may have been
caused by a mutation exclusively in humans.[42] The study of linguistics is considered
as the study of this hypothesised structure.[43]

Cognitive Linguistics, in contrast, rejects the notion of innate grammar, and studies
how the human brain creates linguistic constructions from event schemas.[44] The
impact of cognitive constraints and biases on human language are studied,[45] as are
also frames, idealised cognitive models, and memes.[46] A closely related approach is
evolutionary linguistics[47] which includes the study of linguistic units as cultural
replicators.[48][49] It is possible to study how language replicates and adapts to the
mind of the individual or the speech community.[50][51]

The generative versus evolutionary approach are sometimes called formalism and
functionalism, respectively.[52] This reference is however different from the use of
the terms in human sciences.[53]

Methodology
Linguistics is primarily descriptive.[2] Linguists describe and explain features of
language without making subjective judgments on whether a particular feature or
usage is "good" or "bad". This is analogous to practice in other sciences: a zoologist
studies the animal kingdom without making subjective judgments on whether a
particular species is "better" or "worse" than another.

Prescription, on the other hand, is an attempt to promote particular linguistic usages

over others, often favouring a particular dialect or "acrolect". This may have the aim
of establishing a linguistic standard, which can aid communication over large
geographical areas. It may also, however, be an attempt by speakers of one language
or dialect to exert influence over speakers of other languages or dialects (see
Linguistic imperialism). An extreme version of prescriptivism can be found among
censors, who attempt to eradicate words and structures that they consider to be
destructive to society. Prescription, however, may be practised appropriately in
language instruction, like in ELT, where certain fundamental grammatical rules and
lexical items need to be introduced to a second-language speaker who is attempting
to acquire the language.
Anthropology

The objective of describing languages is often to uncover cultural knowledge about

communities. The use of anthropological methods of investigation on linguistic
sources leads to the discovery of certain cultural traits among a speech community
through its linguistic features. It is also widely used as a tool in language
documentation, with an endeavour to curate endangered languages. However,
linguistic inquiry now uses the anthropological method to understand cognitive,
historical, sociolinguistic and historical processes that languages undergo as they
change and evolve, as well as general anthropological inquiry uses the linguistic
method to excavate into culture. In all aspects, anthropological inquiry usually
uncovers the different variations and relativities that underlie the usage of language.

Sources

Most contemporary linguists work under the assumption that spoken data and
signed data are more fundamental than written data. This is because

Speech appears to be universal to all human beings capable of producing and

perceiving it, while there have been many cultures and speech communities that
lack written communication;
Features appear in speech which aren't always recorded in writing, including
phonological rules, sound changes, and speech errors;
All natural writing systems reflect a spoken language (or potentially a signed one),
even with pictographic scripts like Dongba writing Naxi homophones with the same
pictogram, and text in writing systems used for two languages changing to fit the
spoken language being recorded;
Speech evolved before human beings invented writing;
People learnt to speak and process spoken language more easily and earlier than
they did with writing.

Nonetheless, linguists agree that the study of written language can be worthwhile
and valuable. For research that relies on corpus linguistics and computational
linguistics, written language is often much more convenient for processing large
amounts of linguistic data. Large corpora of spoken language are difficult to create
and hard to find, and are typically transcribed and written. In addition, linguists have
turned to text-based discourse occurring in various formats of computer-mediated
communication as a viable site for linguistic inquiry.

The study of writing systems themselves, graphemics, is, in any case, considered a
branch of linguistics.

Analysis

Before the 20th century, linguists analysed language on a diachronic plane, which
was historical in focus. This meant that they would compare linguistic features and
try to analyse language from the point of view of how it had changed between then
and later. However, with Saussurean linguistics in the 20th century, the focus shifted
to a more synchronic approach, where the study was more geared towards analysis
and comparison between different language variations, which existed at the same
given point of time.

At another level, the syntagmatic plane of linguistic analysis entails the comparison
between the way words are sequenced, within the syntax of a sentence. For example,
the article "the" is followed by a noun, because of the syntagmatic relation between
the words. The paradigmatic plane on the other hand, focuses on an analysis that is
based on the paradigms or concepts that are embedded in a given text. In this case,
words of the same type or class may be replaced in the text with each other to
achieve the same conceptual understanding.

History

Nomenclature

Before the 20th century, the term philology, first

attested in 1716,[56] was commonly used to refer to
the study of language, which was then predominantly
historical in focus.[57][58] Since Ferdinand de
Saussure's insistence on the importance of synchronic
analysis, however, this focus has shifted[59] and the
term philology is now generally used for the "study of
a language's grammar, history, and literary tradition",
especially in the United States[60] (where philology
has never been very popularly considered as the
"science of language").[56]

Although the term "linguist" in the sense of "a student

of language" dates from 1641,[61] the term Elias Lönnrot (1802–1884) was
"linguistics" is first attested in 1847.[61] It is now the a linguist who made long
usual term in English for the scientific study of journeys collecting and
language, though linguistic science is sometimes compiling lyric poems and folk
ballads from different parts of
used.
the land (mainly in Karelia) into
Linguistics is a multi-disciplinary field of research a epic collection called the
Kalevala,[54] which is later
that combines tools from natural sciences, social
known, for example, to have
sciences, and the humanities.[62][63][64] Many
partly inspired the author J. R.
linguists, such as David Crystal, conceptualize the
R. Tolkien to create his own
field as being primarily scientific.[65] The term legendarium.[55]
linguist applies to someone who studies language or
is a researcher within the field, or to someone who
uses the tools of the discipline to describe and analyse specific languages.[66]

Early grammarians

The formal study of language began in India with Pāṇini, the 6th century BC
grammarian who formulated 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology. Pāṇini's systematic
classification of the sounds of Sanskrit into consonants and vowels, and word classes,
such as nouns and verbs, was the first known instance of its kind. In the Middle East,
Sibawayh, a Persian, made a detailed description of Arabic in AD 760 in his
monumental work, Al-kitab fi al-nahw (‫اﻟﻜﺘﺎب ﻓﻲ اﻟﻨﺤﻮ‬, The Book on Grammar), the
first known author to distinguish between sounds and phonemes (sounds as units of
a linguistic system). Western interest in the study of languages began somewhat
later than in the East,[67] but the grammarians of the classical languages did not use
the same methods or reach the same conclusions as their contemporaries in the
Indic world. Early interest in language in the West was a part of philosophy, not of
grammatical description. The first insights into semantic theory were made by Plato
in his Cratylus dialogue, where he argues that words denote concepts that are
eternal and exist in the world of ideas. This work is the first to use the word
etymology to describe the history of a word's meaning. Around 280 BC, one of
Alexander the Great's successors founded a university (see Musaeum) in Alexandria,
where a school of philologists studied the ancient texts in and taught Greek to
speakers of other languages. While this school was the first to use the word
"grammar" in its modern sense, Plato had used the word in its original meaning as
"téchnē grammatikḗ" (Τέχνη Γραμματική), the "art of writing", which is also the title
of one of the most important works of the Alexandrine school by Dionysius Thrax.[68]
Throughout the Middle Ages, the study of language was subsumed under the topic of
philology, the study of ancient languages and texts, practised by such educators as
Roger Ascham, Wolfgang Ratke, and John Amos Comenius.[69]

Comparative philology

In the 18th century, the first use of the comparative method by William Jones sparked
the rise of comparative linguistics.[70] Bloomfield attributes "the first great scientific
linguistic work of the world" to Jacob Grimm, who wrote Deutsche Grammatik.[71] It
was soon followed by other authors writing similar comparative studies on other
language groups of Europe. The study of language was broadened from Indo-
European to language in general by Wilhelm von Humboldt, of whom Bloomfield
asserts:[71]

This study received its foundation at the hands of the Prussian statesman
and scholar Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), especially in the first
volume of his work on Kavi, the literary language of Java, entitled Über die
Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluß auf die
geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts (On the Variety of the
Structure of Human Language and its Influence upon the Mental
Development of the Human Race).

20th century developments

There was a shift of focus from historical and comparative linguistics to synchronic
analysis in early 20th century. Structural analysis was improved by Leonard
Bloomfield, Louis Hjelmslev; and Zellig Harris who also developed methods of
discourse analysis. Functional analysis was developed by the Prague linguistic circle
and André Martinet. As sound recording devices became commonplace in the 1960s,
dialectal recordings were made and archived, and the audio-lingual method provided
a technological solution to foreign language learning. The 1960s also saw a new rise
of comparative linguistics: the study of language universals in linguistic typology.
Towards the end of the century the field of linguistics became divided into further
areas of interest with the advent of language technology and digitalised corpora.

Areas of research

Ecolinguistics

Ecolinguistics explores the role of language in the life-sustaining interactions of

humans, other species and the physical environment. The first aim is to develop
linguistic theories which see humans not only as part of society, but also as part of
the larger ecosystems that life depends on. The second aim is to show how linguistics
can be used to address key ecological issues, from climate change and biodiversity
loss to environmental justice.[72]

Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics is the study of how language is shaped by social factors. This sub-
discipline focuses on the synchronic approach of linguistics, and looks at how a
language in general, or a set of languages, display variation and varieties at a given
point in time. The study of language variation and the different varieties of language
through dialects, registers, and idiolects can be tackled through a study of style, as
well as through analysis of discourse. Sociolinguists research both style and
discourse in language, as well as the theoretical factors that are at play between
language and society.

Developmental linguistics

Developmental linguistics is the study of the development of linguistic ability in

individuals, particularly the acquisition of language in childhood. Some of the
questions that developmental linguistics looks into is how children acquire different
languages, how adults can acquire a second language, and what the process of
language acquisition is.

Neurolinguistics

Neurolinguistics is the study of the structures in the human brain that underlie
grammar and communication. Researchers are drawn to the field from a variety of
backgrounds, bringing along a variety of experimental techniques as well as widely
varying theoretical perspectives. Much work in neurolinguistics is informed by
models in psycholinguistics and theoretical linguistics, and is focused on
investigating how the brain can implement the processes that theoretical and
psycholinguistics propose are necessary in producing and comprehending language.
Neurolinguists study the physiological mechanisms by which the brain processes
information related to language, and evaluate linguistic and psycholinguistic
theories, using aphasiology, brain imaging, electrophysiology, and computer
modelling. Amongst the structures of the brain involved in the mechanisms of
neurolinguistics, the cerebellum which contains the highest numbers of neurons has
a major role in terms of predictions required to produce language.[73]

Applied linguistics

Linguists are largely concerned with finding and describing the generalities and
varieties both within particular languages and among all languages. Applied
linguistics takes the results of those findings and "applies" them to other areas.
Linguistic research is commonly applied to areas such as language education,
lexicography, translation, language planning, which involves governmental policy
implementation related to language use, and natural language processing. "Applied
linguistics" has been argued to be something of a misnomer.[74] Applied linguists
actually focus on making sense of and engineering solutions for real-world linguistic
problems, and not literally "applying" existing technical knowledge from linguistics.
Moreover, they commonly apply technical knowledge from multiple sources, such as
sociology (e.g., conversation analysis) and anthropology. (Constructed language fits
under Applied linguistics.)

Today, computers are widely used in many areas of applied linguistics. Speech
synthesis and speech recognition use phonetic and phonemic knowledge to provide
voice interfaces to computers. Applications of computational linguistics in machine
translation, computer-assisted translation, and natural language processing are
areas of applied linguistics that have come to the forefront. Their influence has had
an effect on theories of syntax and semantics, as modelling syntactic and semantic
theories on computers constraints.

Linguistic analysis is a sub-discipline of applied linguistics used by many

governments to verify the claimed nationality of people seeking asylum who do not
hold the necessary documentation to prove their claim.[75] This often takes the form
of an interview by personnel in an immigration department. Depending on the
country, this interview is conducted either in the asylum seeker's native language
through an interpreter or in an international lingua franca like English.[75] Australia
uses the former method, while Germany employs the latter; the Netherlands uses
either method depending on the languages involved.[75] Tape recordings of the
interview then undergo language analysis, which can be done either by private
contractors or within a department of the government. In this analysis, linguistic
features of the asylum seeker are used by analysts to make a determination about
the speaker's nationality. The reported findings of the linguistic analysis can play a
critical role in the government's decision on the refugee status of the asylum
seeker.[75]

Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and

communication, signs, and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems,
including the study of how meaning is constructed and understood. Semioticians
often do not restrict themselves to linguistic communication when studying the use
of signs but extend the meaning of "sign" to cover all kinds of cultural symbols.
Nonetheless, semiotic disciplines closely related to linguistics are literary studies,
discourse analysis, text linguistics, and philosophy of language. Semiotics, within the
linguistics paradigm, is the study of the relationship between language and culture.
Historically, Edward Sapir and Ferdinand De Saussure's structuralist theories
influenced the study of signs extensively until the late part of the 20th century, but
later, post-modern and post-structural thought, through language philosophers
including Jacques Derrida, Mikhail Bakhtin, Michel Foucault, and others, have also
been a considerable influence on the discipline in the late part of the 20th century
and early 21st century.[76] These theories emphasize the role of language variation,
and the idea of subjective usage, depending on external elements like social and
cultural factors, rather than merely on the interplay of formal elements.

Language documentation

Language documentation combines anthropological inquiry (into the history and

culture of language) with linguistic inquiry, in order to describe languages and their
grammars. Lexicography involves the documentation of words that form a
vocabulary. Such a documentation of a linguistic vocabulary from a particular
language is usually compiled in a dictionary. Computational linguistics is concerned
with the statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational
perspective. Specific knowledge of language is applied by speakers during the act of
translation and interpretation, as well as in language education – the teaching of a
second or foreign language. Policy makers work with governments to implement new
plans in education and teaching which are based on linguistic research.

Since the inception of the discipline of linguistics, linguists have been concerned
with describing and analysing previously undocumented languages. Starting with
Franz Boas in the early 1900s, this became the main focus of American linguistics
until the rise of formal linguistics in the mid-20th century. This focus on language
documentation was partly motivated by a concern to document the rapidly
disappearing languages of indigenous peoples. The ethnographic dimension of the
Boasian approach to language description played a role in the development of
disciplines such as sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, and linguistic
anthropology, which investigate the relations between language, culture, and society.

The emphasis on linguistic description and documentation has also gained

prominence outside North America, with the documentation of rapidly dying
indigenous languages becoming a primary focus in many university programmes in
linguistics. Language description is a work-intensive endeavour, usually requiring
years of field work in the language concerned, so as to equip the linguist to write a
sufficiently accurate reference grammar. Further, the task of documentation requires
the linguist to collect a substantial corpus in the language in question, consisting of
texts and recordings, both sound and video, which can be stored in an accessible
format within open repositories, and used for further research.[77]

Translation

The sub-field of translation includes the translation of written and spoken texts
across media, from digital to print and spoken. To translate literally means to
transmute the meaning from one language into another. Translators are often
employed by organizations such as travel agencies and governmental embassies to
facilitate communication between two speakers who do not know each other's
language. Translators are also employed to work within computational linguistics
setups like Google Translate, which is an automated program to translate words and
phrases between any two or more given languages. Translation is also conducted by
publishing houses, which convert works of writing from one language to another in
order to reach varied audiences. Academic translators specialize in or are familiar
with various other disciplines such as technology, science, law, economics, etc.

Clinical linguistics

Clinical linguistics is the application of linguistic theory to the field of speech-

language pathology. Speech language pathologists work on corrective measures to
treat communication and swallowing disorders.

Chaika (1990) showed that people with schizophrenia who display speech disorders
like rhyming inappropriately have attentional dysfunction, as when a patient was
shown a color chip and then asked to identify it, responded "looks like clay. Sounds
like gray. Take you for a roll in the hay. Heyday, May Day." The color chip was
actually clay-colored, so his first response was correct.'

However, most people suppress or ignore words which rhyme with what they've said
unless they are deliberately producing a pun, poem or rap. Even then, the speaker
shows connection between words chosen for rhyme and an overall meaning in
discourse. People with schizophrenia with speech dysfunction show no such relation
between rhyme and reason. Some even produce stretches of gibberish combined
with recognizable words.[78]

Computational linguistics

Computational linguistics is the study of linguistic issues in a way that is

"computationally responsible", i.e., taking careful note of computational
consideration of algorithmic specification and computational complexity, so that the
linguistic theories devised can be shown to exhibit certain desirable computational
properties and their implementations. Computational linguists also work on
computer language and software development.

Evolutionary linguistics

Evolutionary linguistics is the study of the emergence of the language faculty

through human evolution, and also the application of evolutionary theory to the study
of cultural evolution among different languages. It is also a study of the dispersal of
various languages across the globe, through movements among ancient
communities.[79] Evolutionary linguistics is a highly interdisciplinary field, including
linguists, biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, mathematicians, and others. By
shifting the focus of investigation in linguistics to a comprehensive scheme that
embraces the natural sciences, it seeks to yield a framework by which the
fundamentals of language are understood.

Forensic linguistics
Forensic linguistics is the application of linguistic analysis to forensics. Forensic
analysis investigates the style, language, lexical use, and other linguistic and
grammatical features used in the legal context to provide evidence in courts of law.
Forensic linguists have also used their expertise in the framework of criminal cases.

See also
Anthroponymy International Congress of Linguists
Articulatory phonology International Linguistics Olympiad
Articulatory synthesis Language attrition
Asemic writing Language engineering
Axiom of categoricity Language geography
Biosemiotics Linguistic typology
Cognitive science List of departments of linguistics
Concept mining List of summer schools of linguistics
Critical discourse analysis Metacommunicative competence
Cryptanalysis Microlinguistics
Decipherment Onomastics
Global language system Outline of linguistics
Grammarian (Greco-Roman world) Reading
Index of linguistics articles Rhythm § Linguistics
Integrational linguistics Speaker recognition
Integrationism Speech processing
Intercultural competence Stratificational linguistics

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Bibliography
Akmajian, Adrian; Demers, Richard; Farmer, Ann; Harnish, Robert (2010).
Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication. Cambridge, MA: The
MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-51370-8.

Aronoff, Mark; Rees-Miller, Janie, eds. (2000). The handbook of linguistics. Oxford:
Blackwell.

Bloomfield, Leonard (1983) [1914]. An Introduction to the Study of Language: New

edition (https://books.google.com/books?id=-MN3YkwOgNYC&pg=PA307).
Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN 978-90-272-8047-3.

Chomsky, Noam (1998). On Language (https://archive.org/details/onlanguagechom

sk00chom). The New Press, New York. ISBN 978-1-56584-475-9.

Derrida, Jacques (1967). Of Grammatology (https://archive.org/details/ofgrammatol

ogy00derr). The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-5830-7.

Hall, Christopher (2005). An Introduction to Language and Linguistics. Breaking the

Language Spell. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-8264-8734-6.

Isac, Daniela; Charles Reiss (2013). I-language: An Introduction to Linguistics as

Cognitive Science, 2nd edition (http://linguistics.concordia.ca/i-language/). Oxford
University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-966017-9.

Pinker, Steven (1994). The Language Instinct. William Morrow and Company.
ISBN 978-0-14-017529-5.

Crystal, David (1990). Linguistics. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-013531-2.

External links
The Linguist List (http://linguistlist.org/), a global online linguistics community with
news and information updated daily
Glossary of linguistic terms (http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerm
s/index.htm) by SIL International (last updated 2004)
Glottopedia (http://www.glottopedia.org), MediaWiki-based encyclopedia of
linguistics, under construction
Linguistic sub-fields (https://web.archive.org/web/20071126121113/http://www.lsa
dc.org/info/ling-fields.cfm) – according to the Linguistic Society of America
Linguistics and language-related wiki articles on Scholarpedia (http://www.scholarp
edia.org/article/Language) and Citizendium (http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Linguisti
 cs)
"Linguistics" section (https://web.archive.org/web/20080906110954/http://www.uni
zar.es/departamentos/filologia_inglesa/garciala/bibliography.html) – A Bibliography
of Literary Theory, Criticism and Philology, ed. J.A. García Landa (University of
Zaragoza, Spain)
Isac, Daniela; Charles Reiss (2013). I-language: An Introduction to Linguistics as
Cognitive Science, 2nd edition (https://archive.org/details/ilanguageintrodu00dani).
Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-953420-3.
Linguistics (https://curlie.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Linguistics) at Curlie

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