Linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics
study of other aspects of human language, such as social, cultural, historical and political factors.[12] The study
of cultural discourses and dialects is the domain of
sociolinguistics, which looks at the relation between linguistic variation and social structures, as well as that
of discourse analysis, which examines the structure of
texts and conversations.[13] Research on language through
historical and evolutionary linguistics focuses on how languages change, and on the origin and growth of languages,
particularly over an extended period of time.
rst attested in 1847.[21] It is now the common academic discourses therefore dierentiate themselves through the
term in English for the scientic study of language.
use of vocabulary, and at times through the use of style
too.
People in the medical fraternity, for example, may
Today, the term linguist applies to someone who studies
use
some
medical terminology in their communication
language or is a researcher within the eld, or to somethat
is
specialised
to the eld of medicine. This is ofone who uses the tools of the discipline to describe and
ten
referred
to
as
being
part of the medical discourse,
[22]
analyze specic languages.
and so on.
2.3 Dialect
2.4 Structures
2.2
Discourse
2.5
Relativity
3
Semiotics, the study of signs and sign processes
(semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signication, and communication.
2.5 Relativity
As constructed popularly through the "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis", relativists believe that the structure of a particular language is capable of inuencing 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
Sapirs 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 dierentiation 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 Lako have argued that language reects dierent cultural metaphors,
while the French philosopher of language Jacques Derrida's writings have been seen to be closely associated
with the relativist movement in linguistics, especially
through deconstruction[26] and was even heavily criticised
in the media at the time of his death for his theory of
relativism.[27]
3 Approach
3.1
Generative vs. functional theories of meant that they would compare linguistic features and
try to analyze language from the point of view of how
language
3.2
Methodology
3.3
APPROACH
Analysis
3.4 Anthropology
The objective of describing languages is to often 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 endeavor to curate endangered languages. However, now, linguistic inquiry 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 dierent variations and relativities
that underlie the usage of language.
3.5 Sources
Most contemporary linguists work under the assumption
that spoken data and signed data is 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 reect a spoken language
(or potentially a signed one) they are being used to
write, with even pictographic scripts like Dongba
writing Naxi homophones with the same pictogram,
4.2
Comparative philology
and text in writing systems used for two languages rst known author to distinguish between sounds and
changing to t the spoken language being recorded; phonemes (sounds as units of a linguistic system). Western interest in the study of languages began as early as
Speech evolved before human beings invented writin the East,[30] but the grammarians of the classical laning;
guages did not use the same methods or reach the same
People learnt to speak and process spoken language conclusions as their contemporaries in the Indic world.
Early interest in language in the West was a part of philosmore easily and earlier than they did with writing.
ophy, not of grammatical description. The rst insights
Nonetheless, linguists agree that the study of written lan- into semantic theory were made by Plato in his Cratylus
guage can be worthwhile and valuable. For research that dialogue, where he argues that words denote concepts that
relies on corpus linguistics and computational linguistics, are eternal and exist in the world of ideas. This work is the
written language is often much more convenient for pro- rst to use the word etymology to describe the history of
cessing large amounts of linguistic data. Large corpora of a words meaning. Around 280 BC, one of Alexander the
spoken language are dicult to create and hard to nd, Great's successors founded a university (see Musaeum)
and are typically transcribed and written. In addition, lin- in Alexandria, where a school of philologists studied the
guists have turned to text-based discourse occurring in ancient texts in and taught Greek to speakers of other lanvarious formats of computer-mediated communication as guages. While this school was the rst to use the word
"grammar" in its modern sense, Plato had used the word
a viable site for linguistic inquiry.
in its original meaning as "tchn grammatik" (
The study of writing systems themselves, graphemics, is,
), the art of writing, which is also the title
in any case, considered a branch of linguistics.
of one of the most important works of the Alexandrine
school by Dionysius Thrax.[31] Throughout the Middle
Ages, the study of language was subsumed under the topic
4 History of linguistic thought
of philology, the study of ancient languages and texts,
practiced by such educators as Roger Ascham, Wolfgang
Main article: History of linguistics
Ratke, and John Amos Comenius.[32]
4.1
Early grammarians
4.5 Functionalism
4.4
Functional theories describe language in term of the functions existing at all levels of language.
Generativism
Cognitivism
5.3
Developmental linguistics
all of which are based on the idea that formfunction that are at play between language and society.
correspondences based on representations derived from
embodied experience constitute the basic units of lan5.3 Developmental linguistics
guage.
Cognitive linguistics interprets language in terms of
concepts (sometimes universal, sometimes specic to
a particular tongue) that underlie its form. It is thus
closely associated with semantics but is distinct from
psycholinguistics, which draws upon empirical ndings
from cognitive psychology in order to explain the mental processes that underlie the acquisition, storage, production and understanding of speech and writing. Unlike
generative theory, cognitive linguistics denies that there
is an autonomous linguistic faculty in the mind; it understands grammar in terms of conceptualization; and claims
that knowledge of language arises out of language use.[41]
Because of its conviction that knowledge of language is
learned through use, cognitive linguistics is sometimes
considered to be a functional approach, but it diers from
other functional approaches in that it is primarily concerned with how the mind creates meaning through language, and not with the use of language as a tool of communication.
5
5.1
Areas of research
Historical linguistics
5.2
Sociolinguistics
5.4 Neurolinguistics
Neurolinguistics is the study of the structures in the human brain that underlie grammar and communication.
Researchers are drawn to the eld 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 modeling.
6 Applied linguistics
Main article: Applied linguistics
Linguists are largely concerned with nding and
describing the generalities and varieties both within
particular languages and among all languages. Applied
linguistics takes the results of those ndings 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.[42]
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 ts 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
Inter-disciplinary elds
Within the broad discipline of linguistics, various emerging sub-disciplines focus on a more detailed description
and analysis of language, and are often organized on the
basis of the school of thought and theoretical approach
that they pre-suppose, or the external factors that inuence them.
7.1
Semiotics
Semiotics is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signication 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 inuenced the study of signs extensively until the late part
of the 20th century, but later, post-modern and poststructural thought, through language philosophers including Jacques Derrida, Mikhail Bakhtin, Michel Foucault,
and others, have also been a considerable inuence on the
INTER-DISCIPLINARY FIELDS
7.3 Translation
The sub-eld of translation includes the translation of
written and spoken texts across mediums, from digital to print and spoken. To translate literally means to
transmute the meaning from one language into another.
Translators are often employed by organisations, such
as travel agencies as well as governmental embassies to
facilitate communication between two speakers who do
not know each others language. Translators are also
employed to work within computational linguistics setups like Google Translate for example, which is an
automated, programmed facility 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 and semi specialize on various other disciplines
such as; Technology, Science, Law, Economics etc.
7.4
Biolinguistics
Biolinguistics is the study of natural as well as humantaught communication systems in animals, compared to
human language. Researchers in the eld of biolinguistics have also over the years questioned the possibility and
extent of language in animals.
7.5
Clinical linguistics
7.6
Computational linguistics
7.7
Evolutionary linguistics
7.8
Forensic linguistics
Forensic linguistics is the application of linguistic analysis to forensics. Forensic analysis investigates on 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 contributed
expertise in criminal cases.
See also
Language attrition
Language engineering
Language geography
Linguistic typology
Cognitive science
Machine translation
History of linguistics
Metacommunicative competence
10
Microlinguistics
Natural language processing
Onomastics
Orthography
Philology
Reading
REFERENCES
Rhythm in linguistics
Sign languages
Speaker recognition
Speech processing
Speech recognition
Speech synthesis
Speech-Language Pathology
Straticational linguistics
Text linguistics
Writing systems
References
11
10 Bibliography
Akmajian, Adrian; Demers, Richard; Farmer, Ann;
Harnish, Robert (2010). Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication. Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-51370-6.
Isac, Daniela; Charles Reiss (2013). I-language:
An Introduction to Linguistics as Cognitive Science,
2nd edition. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199660179.
Pinker, Steven (1994).
The Language Instinct. William Morrow and Company. ISBN
9780140175295.
Chomsky, Noam (1998). On Language. The New
Press, New York. ISBN 978-1565844759.
Derrida, Jacques (1967).
Of Grammatology.
The Johns Hopkins University Press.
ISBN
0801858305.
Crystal, David (1990). Linguistics. Penguin Books.
ISBN 9780140135312.
11 External links
The Linguist List, a global online linguistics community with news and information updated daily
Glossary of linguistic terms by SIL International
(last updated 2004)
Language Log, a linguistics blog maintained by
prominent (popular science) linguists
Glottopedia, MediaWiki-based encyclopedia of linguistics, under construction
Linguistic sub-elds according to the Linguistic
Society of America
Linguistics and language-related wiki articles on
Scholarpedia and Citizendium
Linguistics section A Bibliography of Literary
Theory, Criticism and Philology, ed. J. A. Garca
Landa (University of Zaragoza, Spain)
An Academic Linguistics Forum (currently some
technical problems, Feb 2013)
Linguistics Contents for Non-English World
Computerized comparative linguistics Calculator to
compare the relatedness (genetic proximity) for over
160 languages (from Afar to Zulu)
Linguistics at DMOZ
12
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12.1
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