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Linguistics

Study of linguistics and its

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Manohar Louis
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24 views2 pages

Linguistics

Study of linguistics and its

Uploaded by

Manohar Louis
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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What is Linguistics?

The Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines linguistics as the scientific study of language. In other words,
linguistics is an attempt to better understand how human languages are formed and how they function.
Being a multidisciplinary field of study, linguistics incorporates the assistance of biology, physics,
mathematics, sociology, grammar, psychology, history and archaeology, computer science etc. to better
understand the particulars of human speech.

While linguistics is considered to be a relatively new field of study, we can trace its roots to the earliest
of civilizations around the world. Grecian, Mesopotamian, Sumerian, Egyptian and ancient Indian
civilizations provide ample proof for the interest of learners in the complexities of human language. For
instance, Panini, the ancient Indian grammarian, produced a detailed study of the make-up of Sanskrit
language in 1500 B.C. which remains unmatched to the day. Therefore, it can safely be concluded that
linguistics is not a new discipline but a more refined version of an older field of academics. Linguistics as
a modern discipline rejuvenated to life during the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries via European
philologists (people engaged in studying the history of language). Sir William Jones (1746-1794) for
example, was a British who was stationed in Calcutta as a judge during colonial times. Being a
philologist too he came across the Sanskrit language and immediately fell in love with its richness and
refinement as compared to other languages. He began its study and soon stumbled upon the fact that it
contained words which were surprisingly similar in pronunciation and meaning to their counterparts in
Germanic and Latin languages even though they were believed to be totally unrelated by that time. Later
on, he gave the theory of Indo-Germanic family of languages (a common original language split over-
time into its various modern forms) based on his observations. It was discoveries like this that ultimately
resulted in the metamorphosis of philology into linguistics in the 19th century.

Linguistics is considered as a form of science because it follows the general methodology of science –
hypothesis, observation, testing and confirmation/rejection of the hypothesis. However, it would be
wrong to say that linguistics is purely scientific, the reason being that language itself is very flexible and
keeps on changing from time to time and place to place. Linguists, therefore, find at least some
exceptions to their rules often. Therefore, by virtue of such exceptions linguistics is both an art and a
science at once.

It is a general belief that a person who knows multiple languages would be a good linguist as well,
however, this is not completely true. While the knowledge of multiple languages by an individual is
beneficial in linguistic ventures, it does not guarantee that the person would be a good linguist as well.
Linguistics requires a person to break a language into its constituent parts and then study those individual
parts through observation and experimentation and even a polyglot (a person who knows/uses multiple
languages) might not be ready to take up this effort.

Linguistic studies usually take place on two different levels: synchronic and diachronic. When we study a
language at a particular point on the timeline it is called synchronic study. On the other hand, when we
study the development/modification of a language over a particular period on the timeline it is called
diachronic study. For either of these studies linguists stratify the language under observation into the
following major sub-parts:

I. Phonetics: It is the study of articulation, transmission and reception of human speech sounds. It
also studies the types of sounds, the speech mechanism involved in producing them and their
physical properties.
II. Phonology: The study of the how speech sounds form patterns is called phonology. It tells one
which words belong to her/his native tongue and which are foreign, it also tells which sound
combinations are acceptable in a language and which are not.

III. Morphology: Morphology breaks up the words of a language into its smallest
meaningful or grammatical constituents (called morphemes) and analyses
them.

IV. Syntax: Syntax is the study of the order in which different categories of words are arranged in a
language.

V. Semantics: The study of meaning is called semantics – origin of meaning, change of meaning
over time etc.

With the aid of the above mentioned sub-branches, linguistics tries to achieve two major goals: the first
one is to study the nature of language and to deduce a theory about it and the second one is to describe all
languages on the basis of that theory. For example, the American linguist Noam Chomsky proposed a
theory of Language Acquisition Device, which states that human children are born with an innate ability
to learn any kind of language that they might be exposed to. This explains why children - who are often
exposed to incomplete and incorrect linguistic input – face no problem in developing a correct and sound
linguistic knowledge of their first language. Linguistics is full of such theories and hypothesis.

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