OVERVIEW OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

AND THE BRANCHES OF LINGUISTICS

By. Ita Moraliawati

Linguistics is a study of language. When we discuss linguistics, first of all,

we need to disscuss language. Language can be defined based on the substance
and alaso based on the function. as a system of arbitrarily vocal symbol which is
used by community members for communication and interactions. What is meant
by arbitrarily here is when one of the following things happened: It can be called
arbitrarily when there is no connection between the symbol and the sound they
represent. The other definition of arbitrarily is when there is no connection
between the naming of the object and the object itself.
There are five language genres. The first one is frozen language. It is the
most formal communicative style that is often used in respectful situation or
formal ceremony. The example of frozen language is wedding and shakespeare’s
plays. The second one is formal language. It is a language that use formal words
and expressions. The example of formal language is job interview and academic
paper. Next, there is consultative language. The example of consultative language
is when a student is talking to his or her teacher, or when students recites in class.
The fourth type of language is casual or informal langage. This is often used
between friends and insiders who have something to share and have shared
background information. The last is intimate language. This is used in
conversation between friends who are very close and know each other quite well
because having a maximum sharing background of information. The example of
intimate language is the language used by the boyfriends or girlfiends, bestfriends
or family.
Animals speak their own language. Sometimes, human imitates the natural
sounds around them. This kind of words mimicking the sound of nature is called
onomatopoeia. Human language is not inherited. It is acquired. There are three
sources of language. A theist person believes that human language is from God.
Another source of human language can be acquired from the natural sound around

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us. The source can also be from the human himself because humans have organ of
speech/ articulary organ.
Language has been developing from the early century up till now. Human
tries to study about language. This study of language is called linguistics.
Linguistics can be defined as the study of language and of the way the language
works.
Linguistics can not be separated from grammar. Grammar is the set of
elements and rules that make up a language. There are two kinds of grammar
discussed in linguistics. The first is prescriptive grammar, another is descriptive
grammar. Prescriptive grammar is an account of a language that sets out rules
(prescriptions) for how it should be used and for what should not be used based on
the norm derived from a particular model of grammar. Prescriptive is based on
strict rules of language. while descriptive grammar is an account of a language
that seeks to describe how it is used objectively, accurately, systematically, and
comprehensively.
The scope of Linguistics is vast and huge. And its covers a wide range of
fields and topics. Phonetics is concerned with the sounds of languages, phonology
with the way sounds are used in individual languages, morphology with the
structure of words, syntax with the structure of phrases and sentences, and
semantics with the study of meaning. A number of linguistic fields study the
relations between language and the subject matter of related academic disciplines,
such as sociolinguistics (sociology and language) and psycholinguistics
(psychology and language). In principle, applied linguistics is any application of
linguistic methods or results to solve problems related to language. However, the
scope of Linguistics is given below:

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 Pic. 1 Scope of Linguistics
The scope of linguistics covers many apects. But in this paper, there will
be only 10 branches of linguistics that will be discussed. The ten branches of
linguistics that will be discussed are phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax,
pragmatics (macro linguistics), psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics,
sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, historical linguistics (micro linguistics).

1. Phonology
Phonology is a branch or subfield of linguistics which studies sounds and
how it is generated using articulatory organs. While phonetics is more specifically
the study of how speech sounds are produced, their physical properties and how
they are interpreted, phonology focuses more on investigating the organization of
speech sounds in a particular language.
Phonology is based on a theory of what every speaker of a language
unconsciously knows about the sound patterns of that language. Because of this
theoretical status, phonology is concerned with the abstract or mental of the sounds
in language rather than with the actual physical articulation of speech sounds.

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Phonology is about the underlying design, the blueprint of the sound type, which
serves as the constant basis of all the variations in different physical articulations
of that sound type in different contexts.
Thus, when we think of the (t) sound in the words star, writer, and eighth as
being the same, we actually mean that in the Phonology of English, they would be
represented in the same way. In actual speech, these (t) sounds are all very
important.
The phonological system of a language includes an inventory of sounds
and their features, and rules which specify how sounds interact with each other.
Phonology is just one of several aspects of language. It is related to other aspects
such as phonetics, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics.
Here is an illustration that shows the place of phonology in an interacting
hierarchy of levels in linguistics:

Humans have articulary organs to produce sounds. Each organ functions to

produce different sound.

Pic. 2 Articulatory organs of speech

English has vowel phonemes and consonant phonemes. The sound of
vowels can be identified by determining the tongue height, the tongue
advancement, muscular tension and the lips rounding. The consonant can be
identified using its point of articulation, points of articulation and vocal cords.

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There are four kind of stresses, there are primary, secondary, tersiery and weak
stress.
Most phonology fields discuss the way the people who speak languages
produce the sound.

2. Morpholoy
Morphology is branch of linguistics which studies about words, how they
are structured, and how they are put together from the smaller parts. The smallest
part that is discussed in morphology is called morpheme. It is the smallest
meaningful unit in a language. there are two kinds of morpheme: free morpheme
and bound morpheme. Free morphemes are the morphemes that can stand by
their own and have lexical meaning. The examples of free morphems are house,
dog, person. The bound morphemes are morphemes which cannot stand on their
own. They are meaningless alone, thus they need to be attached to free morpheme.
There are two kinds of bound morpheme. The first one is inflexional
morpheme, and the next one is derivational morpheme. Inflectional morphemes in
English include the bound morphemes -s (or -es); 's (or s'); -ed; -en past particle; -
er for comparative; -est superlative; and –ing for present . This bound morpheme
doesn’t change the grammatical category (parts of speech). On the contrary,
derivational morphemes change the grammatical category (parts of speech). The
examples are the -ly adding to adjectives (e.g careful - carefully), change it into an
adverb.
There are some morphological processes in word formation.
1) Acronym
This is a word formation which is taken from the a pronounceable word
formed from the first letter or first few letters of each word in a phrase or title.
For example :
RADAR : Radio detecting and ranging
LASER : Light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation
NATO : The North Atlantic Treaty Organization

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 2) Blending
Blending is a word formation which merge the sounds and the meanings
of two or more other words or word parts. The examples of blending are:
 biopic (biography + picture)
 camcorder (camera + recorder)
3) Clipping
In morphology, clipping is the process of forming a new word by dropping
one or more syllables from a polysyllabic word, such as cell from cellular phone.
Also known as a clipped form, clipped word, shortening, and truncation. On
occasion, a clipped form may replace the original word in everyday usage—such
as the use of piano in place of pianoforte
4) Backformation
In linguistics, back-formation is the process of forming a new word
(a neologism) by removing actual or supposed affixes from another word. Put
simply, a back-formation is a shortened word (such as edit) created from a longer
word (editor). Verb: back-form (which is itself a back-formation). Also
called back-derivation.
5) Coinage
Coinage is the word formation process in which a new word is created
either deliberately or accidentally without using the other word formation
processes and often from seemingly nothing. For example, the following list of
words provides some common coinages found in everyday English: xerox and
aspirin.
6) Onomatopoia
The formation of a word, as cuckoo, meow, honk, or boom, by imitationof
a sound made by or associated with its referent.
7) Borrowing
In linguistics, borrowing (also known as lexical borrowing) is the process
by which a word from one language is adapted for use in another. The word that is
borrowed is called a borrowing, a borrowed word, or a loanword. The example is
the word giraffe which is borrowed from an arabic word.

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 8) Compounding
Compounding is the word formation process in which two or more
lexemes combine into a single new word. Compound words may be written as one
word or as two words joined with a hyphen. For example:
 noun-noun compound: note + book → notebook
 adjective-noun compound: blue + berry → blueberry
9) Conversion
Conversion is the word formation process in which a word of one
grammatical form becomes a word of another grammatical form without any
changes to spelling or pronunciation. The most productive form of conversion in
English is noun to verb conversion. For example access-to access, email-to email.
10) Multiple process
This process can be created through more than one of the above-mentioned
processes. For example the word snowball can experience more than one word
formation process. The first one is compounding between snow + ball and
conversion from noun to verb.

3. Syntax
Another branches of linguistics that we will discuss is syntax. It is a
subfield of linguistics that study the structure of language, the study of how words
can be combined together into sentences.
Syntax makes us aware tht the word like I cat is ungrammatical because it
doesn’t have any verb. Syntactic theories can explain why “I’m quickly running”
(with adverb after verb) sound better (or at least more normal) than “I quickly am
running” (with adverb before verb), eventhough “I quickly sing” and “I sing
quickly” both sound perfectly fine. Thus, one can describe syntax as studying
descriptive grammar.

4. Semantics
This is a branch or subfield of linguistics which study the meaning of
linguistic signs— that is, words, expressions, and sentences. The study of semantics
looks at how meaning works in language, and because of this it often uses native

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speaker intuitions about the meaning of words and phrases to base research on. We
all understand semantics already on a subconscious level, it’s how we understand
each other when we speak. Semantics would study how a man is able to paraphrase,
transform, and detect ambiguities and why the surrounding words sometimes force
him to choose one interpretation rather than another. A semantic analysis, for
example, of English must also explain antonyms, Synonyms, homonyms and
transformations of the language.

5. Pragmatics
Pragmatics is the study of the practical aspects of human action and
thought. Or, we can say it is the study of the use of linguistic signs, words and
sentences, in actual situations. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory,
conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language
behavior inphilosophy, sociology, linguistics and anthropology. pragmatics
studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on structural and
linguistic knowledge (e.g., grammar, lexicon, etc.) of the speaker and listener, but
also on the context of the utterance, any pre-existing knowledge about those
involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, and other factors. In this respect,
pragmatics explains how language users are able to overcome apparent ambiguity,
since meaning relies on the manner, place, time etc. of an utterance.

6. Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics, another branch of linguistics which study the effect of any
and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on
the way language is used. Sociolinguistics overlaps to a considerable degree with
pragmatics. It also studies how dialects differ between groups separated by certain
social variables, e.g., ethnicity, religion, status, gender, level of education, age, etc.,
and how creation and adherence to these rules is used to categorize individuals in
social class or socio-economic classes. As the usage of a language varies from place
to place (dialect), language usage varies among social classes, and it is these
sociolects that sociolinguistics studies.

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 7. Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics is a branch of linguistics that studies the interaction of
language and mind. It concerns the action and behaviour of people and their mental
processes when they use language. The major interest is the study of language
processing. Psycholinguistics covers the cognitive processes that make it possible
to generate a grammatical and meaningful sentence out of vocabulary and
grammatical structures, as well as the processes that make it possible to understand
utterances, words, text, etc. Developmental psycholinguistics studies children's
ability to learn language.
The researches on psycholinguistics are likely to investigate (1) how do
children acquire language (language acquisition)?; (2) how do people process and
comprehend language (language comprehension)?; (3) how do people produce
language (language production)?; and (4) how do people acquire a new language
(second language acquisition)?

8. Historical linguistics
Historical linguistics is the branch of linguistics concerned with the
development of a language or of languages over time. Traditionally known
as philology. Acording to O’grady (2001) "Historical linguistics studies the nature
and causes of language change. The causes of language change find their roots in
the physiological and cognitive makeup of human beings. Sound changes usually
involve articulatory simplification as in the most common type, assimilation.
Analogy and reanalysis are particularly important factors in morphological change.
Language contact resulting in borrowing is another important source of
language change. All components of the grammar, from phonology to semantics,
are subject to change over time. A change can simultaneously affect all instances
of a particular sound or form, or it can spread through the language word by word
by means of lexical diffusion. Sociological factors can play an important role in
determining whether or not a linguistic innovation is ultimately adopted by the
linguistic community at large. Since language change is systemic, it is possible, by
identifying the changes that a particular language or dialect has undergone, to

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reconstruct linguistic history and thereby posit the earlier forms from which later
forms have evolved."

9. Neurolinguistics
Neurolinguistics is the study of how language is represented in the brain:
that is, how and where our brains store our knowledge of the language (or
languages) that we speak, understand, read, and write, what happens in our brains
as we acquire that knowledge, and what happens as we use it in our everyday lives.
Neurolinguists try to answer questions like these: What about our brains
makes human language possible – why is our communication system so elaborate
and so different from that of other animals? Does language use the same kind of
neural computation as other cognitive systems, such as music or mathematics?
Where in your brain is a word that you've learned? How does a word ‘come to mind’
when you need it (and why does it sometimes not come to you?) how do you switch
between them and how do you keep them from interfering with each other?(if you
speak two languages) etc.

10. Applied linguistics

Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field of linguistics that identifies,
investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems. Some of
the academic fields related to
applied linguistics are education,psychology, communication
research, anthropology, and sociology. This branch of lingistics has a wider scope
than any other branch of linguistics. Thus, it will be discussed further in the
following semester.

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