Linguistics

DISS – G11
 It is a field of knowledge involving
the scientific study of language as
a universal and recognizable aspect of
human behavior and capacity.
Nature of Emergence:
Modern linguistics started to
develop in the 18 century with
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philology reaching its zenith in the

19 century.
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Career Track:
 Teacher or Professor
 Writer
 Journalist
 Editor
 Translator or Interpreter
 Speech Therapist
 Types of Linguistics

• Theoretical (General) Linguistics

• Applied Linguistics
 Theoretical Linguistics
 Studies language structure (grammar), and
meaning (semantics). The study of grammar
encompasses morphology (formation and
alteration of words) and syntax (the rules that
determine the way words combine into
phrases and sentences). Phonology, which
is the system used to represent language
through abstract 'sounds', also forms part of
this field.
 Theoretical Linguistics
Linguistics compares languages (comparative
linguistics) and explores their histories, in order
to find universal properties of language and to
account for its development and origins
(historical linguistics). Slightly separate from
general linguistics is the sub-field of phonetics,
the study of how sounds are produced and
perceived.
 Applied Linguistics
 Put linguistic theories into practice in areas such as
foreign language teaching, speech therapy, translation.
 Many areas of applied linguistics today involve the
explicit use of computers. Speech synthesis and
speech recognition use phonetic and phonemic
knowledge to provide voice interfaces to computers.
Applications of computational linguistics in machine
translation, computer-assisted translation, and natural
language processing are extremely fruitful areas of
applied linguistics which have come to the forefront in
recent years with increasing computing power.
Divisions, Specialties, and Subfields
 Phonetics, the study of the sounds of human
language .
 Phonology (or phonemics), the study of
patterns of a language's basic sounds .
 Morphology, the study of the internal structure
of words
 Syntax, the study of how words combine to
form grammatical sentences. .
Divisions, Specialties, and Subfields
 Semantics, the study of the meaning of words
 Pragmatics, the study of how utterances are
used (literally, figuratively, or otherwise) in
communicative acts.
 Discourse analysis, the study of sentences
organized into texts.