Linguistics

What is Linguistics

Definition:

The systematic study of the nature, structure, and variation of language.

 Major subfields of linguistics include phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis.

 The founder of modern structural linguistics was Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), whose most influential work, Course in General Linguistics, was edited by his students and published in 1916.

A- Branches of Linguistics:
1- Morphology

"The branch of linguistics (and one of the major components of grammar) that studies word structures, especially in terms of morphemes. Adjective: morphological."

2- Lexicology

"The branch of linguistics that studies the stock of words (the lexicon) in a given language. Adjective: lexicological."

3- Semantics
"The field of linguistics concerned with the study of meaning in language."
B- Linguistics Terms :
1- Grammar
    1) The systematic study and description of a language.
    2)  A set of rules and examples dealing with the syntax and word structures (morphology) of a language. Adjective: grammatical.
2- Syntax
    1) In linguistics, the study of the rules that govern the ways in which words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. Syntax is one of the major components of grammar.
    2) The arrangement of words in a sentence. Adjective: syntactic.
3- Morpheme
A meaningful linguistic unit consisting of a word (such as dog) or a word element (such as the -s at the end of dogs) that can't be divided into smaller meaningful parts. Adjective: morphemic.
Morphemes are commonly classified into free morphemes (which can occur as separate words) and bound morphemes (which can't stand alone as words).
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What is a Linguist

Definition:

- A specialist in linguistics (the study of language).

                                        Observations:

• "Some believe that a linguist is a person who speaks several languages fluently. Others believe that linguists are language experts who can help you decide whether it is better to say 'It is I' or 'It is me.' Yet it is quite possible to be a professional linguist (and an excellent one at that) without having taught a single language class, without having interpreted at the UN, and without speaking any more than one language.
  
  "What is linguistics, then? Fundamentally, the field is concerned with the nature of language and (linguistic) communication."
  
  (Adrian Akmajian, Richard Demerts, Ann Farmer, and Robert Harnish, Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication. MIT Press, 2001)                                                                    
•  "The role of the linguist today goes beyond the academic description of language for its own sake, to be discussed with other academics at conferences. For one thing, sociolinguists are called upon as experts by governments in planning for education and governmental administration. In these matters, they are forced to make choices about the suitability of certain varieties of language and certain words and expressions within those varieties."
  (Rajend Mesthrie, Joan Swann, Anna Deumert, and William Leap, Introducing Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2000)
• "The pioneer linguist Ferdinand de Saussure criticized scholars who studied the history of a part of a language, dissociated from the whole to which it belongs. He insisted that linguists should study the complete system of a language at some point in time, and then examine how the entire system changes over time. Saussure's pupil Antoine Meillet (1926: 16) is responsible for the aphorism: 'une langue constitue un système complexe de moyens d'expression, système où tout se tient' ('a language makes up a complex system of means of expression, a system in which everything holds together'). Scientific linguistics who produce comprehensive grammars of languages naturally follow this tenet. (Proponents of formal theories, who look at isolated bits of language for some particular issue, naturally contravene this fundamental principle.)"
  
  (R. M. W. Dixon, Basic Linguistic Theory Volume 1: Methodology. Oxford University Press, 2009).
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What is Applied Linguistics 

Definition:

The use of language-related research in a wide variety of fields, including language acquisition, language teaching, literacy, literary studies, gender studies, speech therapy, discourse analysis, censorship, workplace communication, media studies, translation studies, lexicography, and forensic linguistics. 

                                    Observations:

• "Applied linguistics began life in the 1950s as a postgraduate qualification. Its initial target, largely language teaching, has always been practical, policy-oriented. Its preparation at postgraduate level has been multidisciplinary and, as in mathematics, there is a continuing tension between pure (general, theoretical) linguistics and applied linguistics. It does not expect its conclusions to be buttressed with certainty (and it is unclear whether theoretical linguistics or any other social science can expect that, either). For applied linguistics, there is no finality: the problems such as how to assess language proficiency, what is the optimum age to begin a second language, what distinguishes native and non-native speakers, how we can treat memory loss, these problems may find local and temporary solutions but the problems recur. No doubt, once again, the same may be said of theoretical linguistics: whether all grammars are fundamentally one grammar; what the relation is between the sign and the referent; answers are partial, never final--the problems remain."
  (Alan Davies, An Introduction to Applied Linguistics: From Practice to Theory, 2nd ed. Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2007)



• "[A]pplied linguistics is an area of work that deals with language use in professional settings, translation, speech pathology, literacy, and language education; and it is not merely the application of linguistic knowledge to such settings but is a semiautonomous and interdisciplinary . . . domain of work that draws on but is not dependent on areas such as sociology, education, anthropology, cultural studies, and psychology."
  
  (Alastair Pennycook, Critical Applied Linguistics: A Critical Introduction. Routledge, 2001)
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  What is cognitive Linguistics
  
  
  Definition:
   A cluster of overlapping approaches to the study of language as a mental phenomenon.
                                    Observations:
  
  

  • "Language offers a window into cognitive function, providing insights into the nature, structure and organization of thoughts and ideas. The most important way in which cognitive linguistics differs from other approaches to the study of language, then, is that language is assumed to reflect certain fundamental properties and design features of the human mind."
    (Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green, Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction. Routledge, 2006)
  
  
  
  • "Cognitive Linguistics is the study of language in its cognitive function, where cognitive refers to the crucial role of intermediate informational structures with our encounters with the world. Cognitive linguistics . . . [assumes] that our interaction with the world is mediated through informational structures in the mind. It is more specific than cognitive psychology, however, by focusing on natural language as a means for organizing, processing, and conveying that information."
    (D. Geeraerts and H. Cuyckens, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Oxford Univ. Press, 2007)
  
  
  
  • "Cognitive psychologists, and others, criticize cognitive linguistic work because it is so heavily based on individual analysts' intuitions . . ., and thus does not constitute the kind of objective, replicable data preferred by many scholars in the cognitive and natural sciences (e.g., data collected on large numbers of naive participants under controlled laboratory conditions)."
    (Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., "Why Cognitive Linguists Should Care More About Empirical Methods," Methods in Cognitive Linguistics, ed. by Mónica González-Márquez et al. John Benjamins, 2007)
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  What is Historical Linguistics
  
  Definition:
  
  

  The branch of linguistics concerned with the development of a language or of languages over time. Traditionally known as philology.

  
  

                                Examples and Observations:

• "Linguistic history is basically the darkest of the dark arts, the only means to conjure up the ghosts of vanished centuries. With linguistic history we reach farthest back into the mystery: humankind."
  (Cola Minis, quoted by Lyle Campbell in Historical Linguistics: An Introduction. MIT, 2004)



• "[A] language is not some gradually and imperceptibly changing object which smoothly floats through time and space, as historical linguistics based on philological material all too easily suggests."
  (Paul Kiparsky, 1968; quoted by Richard D. Janda and Brian D. Joseph in The Handbook of Historical Linguistics. Wiley-Blackwell, 2003)     

 

• "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."
• (William O'Grady et al., Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. Bedford, 2001)
• "[O]ne fundamental issue in historical linguistics concerns how best to deal with the inevitable gaps and discontinuities that exist in our knowledge of attested language varieties over time. . . .
• "One (partial) response is that--to put matters bluntly--in order to deal with gaps, we speculate about the unknown (i.e. about intermediate stages) based on the known. While we typically use loftier language to characterize this activity . . ., the point remains the same. In this respect, one of the relatively established aspects of language that can be exploited for historical study is our knowledge of the present, where we normally have access to far more data than could ever possibly become available for any previously attested stage (at least before the age of audio and video recording), no matter how voluminous an earlier corpus may be."

(Brian D. Joseph and Richard D. Janda, "On Language, Change, and Language Change." The Handbook of Historical Linguistics. Wiley-Blackwell, 2003)    

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      What is Sociolinguistics

       Definition:

 The study of the relation between language and society--a branch of both linguistics and sociology.

                       Examples and Observations:

• "There are several possible relationships between language and society. One is that social structure may either influence or determine linguistic structure and/or behavior. . . .
  
  "A second possible relationship is directly opposed to the first: linguistic structure and/or behavior may either influence or determine social structure. . . . A third possible relationship is that the influence is bi-directional: language and society may influence each other. . . .
  
  "Whatever sociolinguistics is, . . . any conclusions we come to must be solidly based on evidence."
  (R. Wardhaugh, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Wiley, 2005)



• "Sociolinguistic competence enables speakers to distinguish among possibilities such as the following. To get someone's attention in English, each of the utterances
  
  
  1. 'Hey!',
  2. 'Excuse me!', and
  3. 'Sir!' or 'Ma'am!'
  is grammatical and a fully meaningful contribution to the discourse of the moment, but only one of them may satisfy societal expectations and the speaker's preferred presentation of self. 'Hey!' addressed to one's mother or father, for example, often expresses either a bad attitude or surprising misunderstanding of the usually recognized social proprieties, and saying 'Sir!' to a 12-year-old probably expresses inappropriate deference.
  
  "Every language accommodates such differences as a non-discrete scale or continuum of recognizably different linguistic 'levels' or styles, termed registers, and every socially mature speaker, as part of learning the language, has learned to distinguish and choose among places on the scale of register."
  (G. Hudson, Essential Introductory Linguistics. Blackwell, 2000)

Also Known As: sociology of language.

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What is Psycholinguistics  

 Definition:

The study of the mental aspects of language and speech--a branch of both linguistics and psychology.

Etymology:

From the Greek, "mind" + the Latin, "tongue"

Observations:

• "Psycholinguists study how word meaning, sentence meaning, and discourse meaning are computed and represented in the mind. They study how complex words and sentences are composed in speech and how they are broken down into their constituents in the acts of listening and reading. In short, psycholinguists seek to understand how language is done. . . .
  
  "In general, psycholinguistic studies have revealed that many of the concepts employed in the analysis of sound structure, word structure, and sentence structure also play a role in language processing. However, an account of language processing also requires that we understand how these linguistic concepts interact with other aspects of human processing to enable language production and comprehension."
  (William O'Grady, et al., Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001)



• "Psycholinguistics . . . draws on ideas and knowledge from a number of associated areas, such as phonetics, semantics and pure linguistics. There is a constant exchange of information between psycholinguists and those working in neurolinguistics, who study how language is represented in the brain. There are also close links with studies in artificial intelligence. Indeed, much of the early interest in language processing derived from the AI goals of designing computer programs that can turn speech into writing and programs that can recognize the human voice."
  (John Field, Psycholinguistics: A Resource Book for Students. Routledge, 2003)



• "Psycholinguistics has classically focused on button press tasks and reaction time experiments from which cognitive processes are being inferred. The advent of neuroimaging opened new research perspectives for the psycholinguist as it became possible to look at the neuronal mass activity that underlies language processing. Studies of brain correlates of psycholinguistic processes can complement behavioral results, and in some cases . . . can lead to direct information about the basis of psycholinguistic processes."
  (Friedmann Pulvermüller, "Word Processing in the Brain as Revealed by Neurophysiological Imaging." The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics, ed. by M. Gareth Gaskell. Oxford Univ. Press, 2009)

Pronunciation: si-ko-lin-GWIS-tiks.