Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It tries to answer basic questions such as

• What is language?
• How is language represented in the mind?
• How does language work?

The underlying goal of linguists is to discover the underlying rules of all languages; that is, the common elements which form a language.

Areas of Study

General Linguistics is the study of

• grammar
• semantics - meaning
• morphology - word formation & structure
• syntax - sentence structure
• phonology - sound patterns
• phonetics - the production/perception of sounds

Applied Linguistics is the study of the way in which language is used and looks at areas such as

• teaching methods
• second langauge acquisition - learning language
• speech therapy and pathology

In addition, there are specialist fields such as:

• computational linguistics - looking at the study of language using technology
• corpus linguistics - the study of language by comparing corpora
• sociolinguistics - the way in which language influences (and is influenced by) society