Q-WHATI IS LINGUISTIC?

WRITE LEVELS
OF LINGUISTIC?
Linguistics is the science of language, and linguists are scientists who
apply the scientific method to questions about the nature and function
of language. Linguistics is the study of language - how it is put together
and how it functions. Various building blocks of different types and
sizes are combined to make up a language. Sounds are brought
together and sometimes when this happens, they change their form
and do interesting things. Words are arranged in a certain order, and
sometimes the beginnings and endings of the words are changed to
adjust the meaning. Then the meaning itself can be affected by the
arrangement of words and by the knowledge of the speaker about
what the hearer will understand. Linguistics is the study of all of this.
There are various branches of linguistics which are given their own
name, some of which are described below. Linguists are people who
study linguistics. Linguists conduct formal studies of speech sounds,
grammatical structures, and meaning across all the world’s over 6,000
languages. They also investigate the history of and changes within
language families and how language is acquired when we are infants.
Linguists examine the relationship between written and spoken
language as well as the underlying neural structures that enable us to
use language.
Clearly, many of the questions linguists pose overlap with fields in the
life sciences, social sciences, and humanities, thus making linguistics a
multidisciplinary field. As a multidisciplinary field, Linguistics, attempts
to understand how language is stored in the human mind/brain and
how it is part of everyday human behavior through its sister fields of
neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and
computer science.
It is important to note that the term “linguist” may cause some
confusion because it is known to be used differently in non-academic
domains. Sometimes language experts are referred to as linguists, but
those individuals do not necessarily conduct the same kind of scientific
research on language as carried out by those with advanced degrees in
linguistics. “Polyglot” is the term used for a person who has knowledge
of multiple languages. And although it is possible for a person to be
both a linguist and a polyglot, it is just as possible that a linguist speaks
only one language. Linguists investigate how people acquire
their knowledge about language, how this knowledge
interacts with other cognitive processes, how it varies
across speakers and geographic regions, and how to model
this knowledge computationally. They study how to
represent the structure of the various aspects of language
(such as sounds or meaning), how to account for different
linguistic patterns theoretically, and how the different
components of language interact with each other. Many
linguists collect empirical evidence to help them gain
insight into a specific language or languages in
general. They may conduct research by interacting with
children and adults in schools, in the field, and in university
labs.
 LEVELS OF LINGUISTIC

HISTOR DIACHRONIC

HISTORICAL

SYNCHRONICAL

1) Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies the sounds of

human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent
aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of
speech sounds or signs (phones): their physiological production,
acoustic properties, auditory perception, and neurophysiological
 status. Phonetics studies the defining characteristic of all human
vocal noise, and concentrates its attention on those sounds which
occur in the languages of the world. In other words, phoneticians try
to study how the various organs of speech- the lungs, the larynx, the
soft palate, the tongue and the lip – function in the production of
speech.
Phonetics as a research discipline has three main branches:

 Articulatory phonetics: the articulation of speech

 It recognize that speech is produced by some kind of sound-making
apparatus inside the human body, and that specific sounds may be
related to specific movement of the apparatus. Hence it is the study
of movement of the speech organs in the articulation of speech.
Speech is produced by the movement of the organs of speech –
lungs, larynx, soft palate, tongue, teeth and lips. The knowledge of
the organ of speech, their relation to each other, and the way in
which they are used in speaking provides a sound basis for the
classification of sounds of human languages.
 Acoustic phonetics: the acoustics of speech
 It is the study of the physical properties of speech sound such as
frequency and amplitude in their transmission. Acoustic phonetics
analysis the speech waves with the help of instruments; they
attempt to describe the physical properties of the stream of sound
that issues forth from the mouth of a speaker. It is in the field of
acoustic phonetics that the most striking development have taken
place since the Second World War. Complex sound wave produced
in speech can be analysed into their component frequencies and
relative amplitudes.
 Auditory phonetics: the perception of speech
 It is the study of hearing and the perception of speech sounds. It
studies different auditory impressions of quality, pitch and loudness
 of sounds. The auditory classification of speech-sounds has not yet
been carried to a decisive phase.
Phonetic insight is used in several applied linguistic fields such as:

 Forensic phonetics: the use of phonetics for legal purposes

 Speech recognition: the analysis and transcription of recorded
speech by a computer system
 Speech synthesis: the production of human speech by a computer
system

 2) Phonology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the

systematic organization of sounds in spoken languages and signs
in sign languages. It used to be only the study of
the systems of phonemes in spoken languages (and therefore
used to be also called phonemics, or phonematics), but it may also
cover any linguistic analysis either at a level beneath the word
(including syllable, onset and rime, articulatory gestures,
articulatory features, mora, etc.) or at all levels of language
where sound or signs are structured to convey linguistic meaning.
 Sign languages have a phonological system equivalent to the
system of sounds in spoken languages. The building blocks of
signs are specifications for movement, location and handshape.
Phonology is often distinguished from phonetics. While phonetics
concerns the physical production, acoustic transmission
and perception of the sounds of speech,[3][4] phonology describes the
way sounds function within a given language or across languages to
encode meaning. For many linguists, phonetics belongs to descriptive
linguistics, and phonology to theoretical linguistics, although
establishing the phonological system of a language is necessarily an
application of theoretical principles to analysis of phonetic evidence.
Note that this distinction was not always made, particularly before the
development of the modern concept of the phoneme in the mid 20th
century. Some subfields of modern phonology have a crossover with
phonetics in descriptive disciplines such as psycholinguistics and speech
perception, resulting in specific areas like articulatory
phonology or laboratory phonology.

3) Morphology :This is the level of words and endings, to put

it in simplified terms. It is what one normally understands by grammar
(along with syntax). The term morphology refers to the analysis of
minimal forms in language which are, however, themselves comprised
of sounds and which are used to construct words which have either a
grammatical or a lexical function.
Lexicology is concerned with the study of the lexicon from a formal
point of view and is thus closely linked to (derivational) morphology.
In linguistics, morphology (/mɔːrˈfɒlədʒi/) is the study of words, how
they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same
language. It analyzes the structure of words and parts of words, such as
stems, root words, prefixes, and suffixes. Morphology also looks at
parts of speech, intonation and stress, and the ways context can change
a word's pronunciation and meaning. Morphology differs from
morphological typology, which is the classification of languages based
on their use of words, and lexicology, which is the study of words and
how they make up a language's vocabulary.
3) Syntax
This is the level of sentences. It is concerned with the meanings of
words in combination with each other to form phrases or sentences. In
particular, it involves differences in meaning arrived at by changes in
word order, the addition or subtraction of words from sentences or
changes in the form of sentences. It furthermore deals with the
relatedness of different sentence types and with the analysis of
ambiguous sentences.

Language typology attempts to classify languages according to high-

order principles of morphology and syntax and to make sets of
generalisations across different languages irrespective of their genetic
affiliations, i.e. of what language family they belong to. In linguistics,
syntax (/ˈsɪntæks/) is the set of rules, principles, and processes that
govern the structure of sentences (sentence structure) in a given
language, usually including word order. The term syntax is also used to
refer to the study of such principles and processes. The goal of many
syntacticians is to discover the syntactic rules common to all languages.

4) Semantics
This is the area of meaning. It might be thought that semantics is
covered by the areas of morphology and syntax, but it is quickly seen
that this level needs to be studied on its own to have a proper
perspective on meaning in language. Here one touches, however, on
practically every other level of language as well as there exists lexical,
grammatical, sentence and utterance meaning. Semantics is the
linguistic and philosophical study of meaning in language, programming
languages, formal logics, and semiotics. It is concerned with the
relationship between signifiers—like words, phrases, signs, and
symbols—and what they stand for in reality, their denotation. In
linguistics, it is the study of the interpretation of signs or symbols used
in agents or communities within particular circumstances and contexts.
Within this view, sounds, facial expressions, body language, and
proxemics have semantic (meaningful) content, and each comprises
several branches of study. In written language, things like paragraph
structure and punctuation bear semantic content; other forms of
language bear other semantic content.

5) Pragmatics
The concern here is with the use of language in specific situations. The
meaning of sentences need not be the same in an abstract form and in
practical use. In the latter case one speaks of utterance meaning. The
area of pragmatics relies strongly for its analyses on the notion of
speech act which is concerned with the actual performance of
language. This involves the notion of proposition – roughly the content
of a sentence – and the intent and effect of an utterance. Pragmatics is
a subfield of linguistics and semiotics that studies the ways in which
context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act
theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other
approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, linguistics
and anthropology. 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 (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) HISTORICAL LINGUISTIC
Historical linguistics—traditionally known as philology—is the branch of
linguistics concerned with the development of a language or of
languages over time.

The primary tool of historical linguistics is the comparative method, a

way of identifying relations among languages in the absence of written
records. For this reason, historical linguistics is sometimes called
comparative-historical linguistics. 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
reconstruct linguistic history and thereby posit the earlier forms from
which later forms have evolved."

7) DIACHRONIC
Diachronic linguistics is the study of a language through different
periods in history.
Diachronic literally means across-time, and it describes any work which
maps the shifts and fractures and mutations of languages over the
centuries. In gross outline, it is similar to evolutionary biology, which
maps the shifts and transformations of rocks. Diachronic linguistics
refers to the study of how a language evolves over a period of time.
Tracing the development of English from the Old English period to the
twentieth century is a diachronic study.

8) SYNCHRONIC
A synchronic approach considers a language at a moment in time
without taking its history into account. Synchronic linguistics aims at
describing a language at a specific point of time, usually the present.
synchronic linguistics is the geographic study of language. A synchronic
study of language is a comparison of languages or dialects—various
spoken differences of the same language—used within some defined
spatial region and during the same period of time. Determining the
regions of the United States in which people currently say 'pop' rather
than 'soda' and 'idea' rather than 'idear' are examples of the types of
inquiries pertinent to a synchronic study."
For example, analyzing the word order in a sentence in Old English
only would be a study in synchronistic linguistics. If you looked at how
word order changed in a sentence from Old English to Middle English
and now to modern English, that would be a diachronic study.