A Crash Course in The Branches of Linguistics

A Crash Course in the Branches of Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. But as Chris Daly points out, "there are rival views about
what else should be said about what linguistics is" (Philosophy of Language: An Introduction, 2013).
English
 English Grammar
o An Introduction to Punctuation
 Writing by Richard Nordquist
Updated July 03, 2019
Don't confuse a linguist with a polyglot (someone who's able to speak many different

languages) or with a language maven or SNOOT (a self-appointed authority on usage). A
linguist is a specialist in the field of linguistics.
So then, what is linguistics?
Simply defined, linguistics is the scientific study of language. Though various types of
language studies (including grammar and rhetoric) can be traced back over 2,500 years,
the era of modern linguistics is barely two centuries old.
Kicked off by the late-18th-century discovery that many European and Asian languages
descended from a common tongue (Proto-Indo-European), modern linguistics was
reshaped, first, by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) and more recently by Noam
Chomsky (born 1928) and others.
But there's a bit more to it than that.
Multiple Perspectives on Linguistics

Let's consider a few expanded definitions of linguistics.
 "Everyone will agree that linguistics is concerned with the lexical and grammatical

categories of individual languages, with differences between one type of language
and another, and with historical relations within families of languages."
(Peter Matthews, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford University
Press, 2005)
 "Linguistics can be defined as the systematic inquiry into human language—into its
structures and uses and the relationship between them, as well as into its
development through history and its acquisition by children and adults. The scope of
linguistics includes both language structure (and its underlying grammatical
competence) and language use (and its underlying communicative competence)."
(Edward Finegan, Language: Its Structure and Use, 6th ed. Wadsworth, 2012)
 "Linguistics is concerned with human language as a universal and recognizable part
of the human behaviour and of the human faculties, perhaps one of the most
essential to human life as we know it, and one of the most far-reaching of human
capabilities in relation to the whole span of mankind’s achievements."
(Robert Henry Robins, General Linguistics: An Introductory Survey, 4th ed.
Longmans, 1989)
 "There is often considerable tension in linguistics departments between those who
study linguistic knowledge as an abstract 'computational' system, ultimately
embedded in the human brain, and those who are more concerned with language as
a social system played out in human interactional patterns and networks of beliefs. . .
. Although most theoretical linguists are reasonable types, they are sometimes
accused of seeing human language as purely a formal, abstract system, and of
marginalizing the importance of sociolinguistic research."
(Christopher J. Hall, An Introduction to Language and Linguistics: Breaking the
Language Spell. Continuum, 2005)
The "tension" that Hall refers to in this last passage is reflected, in part, by the many
different types of linguistic studies that exist today.
Branches of Linguistics
Like most academic disciplines, linguistics has been divided into numerous overlapping
subfields—"a stew of alien and undigestible terms," as Randy Allen Harris characterized
them in his 1993 book The Linguistics Wars (Oxford University Press). Using the sentence
"Fideau chased the cat" as an example, Allen offered this "crash course" in the major
branches of linguistics. (Follow the links to learn more about these subfields.)
Phonetics concerns the acoustic waveform itself, the systematic disruptions of air

molecules that occur whenever someone utters the expression.
Phonology concerns the elements of that waveform which recognizably punctuate the
sonic flow—consonants, vowels, and syllables, represented on this page by letters.
Morphology concerns the words and meaningful subwords constructed out of the
phonological elements—that Fideau is a noun, naming some mongrel, that chase is a verb
signifying a specific action which calls for both a chaser and a chasee, that -ed is a suffix
indicating past action, and so on.
Syntax concerns the arrangement of those morphological elements into phrases and
sentences—that chased the cat is a verb phrase, that the cat is its noun phrase (the chasee),
that Fideau is another noun phrase (the chaser), that the whole thing is a sentence.
Semantics concerns the proposition expressed by that sentence—in particular, that it is
true if and only if some mutt named Fideau has chased some definite cat.
Though handy, Harris's list of linguistic subfields is far from comprehensive. In fact, some
of the most innovative work in contemporary language studies is being carried out in even
more specialized branches, some of which hardly existed 30 or 40 years ago.
Here, without the assistance of Fideau, is a sample of those specialized branches: applied

linguistics, cognitive linguistics, contact linguistics, corpus linguistics, discourse
analysis, forensic linguistics, graphology, historical linguistics, language
acquisition, lexicology, linguistic
anthropology, neurolinguistics, paralinguistics, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguist
ics, and stylistics.
Is That All There Is?

Certainly not. For both the scholar and the general reader, many fine books on linguistics
and its subfields are available. But if asked to recommend a single text that is at once
knowledgeable, accessible, and thoroughly enjoyable, plump for The Cambridge
Encyclopedia of Language, 3rd ed., by David Crystal (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Just be warned: Crystal's book may turn you into a budding linguist.
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-linguistics-1691012
https://www.garneteducation.com/product/english-for-language-and-linguistics-in-higher-education-studies/
https://www.garnetesap.com/lingunit1.php

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A Crash Course in the Branches of Linguistics

Don't confuse a linguist with a polyglot (someone who's able to speak many different

So then, what is linguistics?

But there's a bit more to it than that.

Multiple Perspectives on Linguistics

 "Everyone will agree that linguistics is concerned with the lexical and grammatical

Phonetics concerns the acoustic waveform itself, the systematic disruptions of air

Here, without the assistance of Fideau, is a sample of those specialized branches: applied

Is That All There Is?

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