Linguistics is the scientific study of language it is based Linguistics is based on a theoretical as

well as a descriptive study of langua

ge and is also interlinked with the applied fields of language studies and language learning,
which entails the study of specific languages.
Before the 20th century, linguistics evolved in conjunction with literary study and did not
employ scientific methods. Modern-day linguistics is considered a science because it entails a
comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language – i.e.,
the cognitive, the social, the cultural, the psychological, the environmental, the biological, the
literary, the grammatical, the paleographical, and the structural.
Traditional areas of linguistic analysis correspond to syntax (rules governing the structure of
sentences), semantics (meaning), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and
equivalent gestures in sign languages), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular
language), and pragmatics (how social context contributes to meaning). Subdisciplines such
as biolinguistics (the study of the biological variables and evolution of language)
and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors in human language) bridge many of
these divisions.
Linguistics encompasses many branches and subfields that span both theoretical and practical
applications. Theoretical linguistics (including traditional descriptive linguistics) is concerned
with understanding the universal and fundamental nature of language and developing a general
theoretical framework for describing it. Applied linguistics seeks to utilize the scientific findings
of the study of language for practical purposes, such as developing methods of improving
language education and literacy.
Linguistic features may be studied through a variety of perspectives: synchronically (by
describing the structure of a language at a specific point in time) or diachronically (through the
historical development of a language over a period of time), in monolinguals or in multilinguals,
among children or amongst adults, in terms of how it is being learnt or how it was acquired, as
abstract objects or as cognitive structures, through written texts or through oral elicitation, and
finally through mechanical data collection or through practical fieldwork.
Linguistics emerged from the field of philology, of which some branches are more qualitative
and holistic in approach. Today, philology and linguistics are variably described as related fields,
subdisciplines, or separate fields of language study but, by and large, linguistics can be seen as
an umbrella term. Linguistics is also related to the philosophy of
language, stylistics, rhetoric, semiotics, lexicography, and translation.
Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure is regarded as the creator of semiotics
Historical linguistics
Historical linguistics is the study of how language changes over history, particularly with regard
to a specific language or a group of languages. Western trends in historical linguistics date back
to roughly the late 18th century, when the discipline grew out of philology, the study of ancient
texts and oral traditions.
Historical linguistics emerged as one of the first few sub-disciplines in the field, and was most
widely practised during the late 19th century. Despite a shift in focus in the 20th century
towards formalism and generative grammar, which studies the universal properties of language,
historical research today still remains a significant field of linguistic inquiry. Subfields of the
discipline include language change and grammaticalization.[15]
Historical linguistics studies language change either diachronically (through a comparison of
different time periods in the past and present) or in a synchronic manner (by observing
developments between different variations that exist within the current linguistic stage of a
language).[citation needed]
At first, historical linguistics was the cornerstone of comparative linguistics, which involves a
study of the relationship between different languages. At that time, scholars of historical
linguistics were only concerned with creating different categories of language families, and
reconstructing prehistoric proto-languages by using both the comparative method and the method
of internal reconstruction. Internal reconstruction is the method by which an element that
contains a certain meaning is re-used in different contexts or environments where there is a
variation in either sound or analogy.
The reason for this had been to describe well-known Indo-European languages, many of which
had detailed documentation and long written histories. Scholars of historical linguistics also
studied Uralic languages, another European language family for which very little written
material existed back then. After that, there also followed significant work on the corpora of
other languages, such as the Austronesian languages and the Native American language families.
In historical work, the uniformitarian principle is generally the underlying working hypothesis,
occasionally also clearly expressed. The principle was expressed early by William Dwight
Whitney, who considered it imperative, a "must", of historical linguistics to "look to find the
same principle operative also in the very outset of that [language] history."
The above approach of comparativism in linguistics is now, however, only a small part of the
much broader discipline called historical linguistics. The comparative study of specific Indo-
European languages is considered a highly specialized field today, while comparative research is
carried out over the subsequent internal developments in a language: in particular, over the
development of modern standard varieties of languages, and over the development of a language
from its standardized form to its varieties.
For instance, some scholars also tried to establish super-families, linking, for example, Indo-
European, Uralic, and other language families to Nostratic. While these attempts are still not
widely accepted as credible methods, they provide necessary information to establish relatedness
in language change. This is generally hard to find for events long ago, due to the occurrence of
chance word resemblances and variations between language groups. A limit of around 10,000
years is often assumed for the functional purpose of conducting research. It is also hard to date
various proto-languages. Even though several methods are available, these languages can be
dated only approximately.
In modern historical linguistics, we examine how languages change over time, focusing on the
relationships between dialects within a specific period. This includes studying morphological,
syntactical, and phonetic shifts. Connections between dialects in the past and present are also
explored.