☼ Concept Map

Linguistics ⸤◻️⸥ Entries

↩ 🔳 🔳 🔳

Primary

⁀➴

Linguistics ⸤◻️⸥｜Definition｜1st｜20260115181907-00-⌔

Linguistics - Wikipedia

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of language.123 The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language, and analogous systems of sign languages), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to meaning).4 Subdisciplines such as biolinguistics (the study of the biological variables and evolution of language) and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors in human language) bridge many of these divisions.5

Linguistics encompasses many branches and subfields that span both theoretical and practical applications.6 Theoretical linguistics is concerned with understanding the universal and fundamental nature of language and developing a general theoretical framework for describing it. Applied linguistics seeks to utilize the scientific findings of the study of language for practical purposes, such as developing methods of improving language education and literacy. Mathematical linguistics is the application of mathematics to model phenomena and solve problems in general linguistics and theoretical linguistics. Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions.

Linguistic features may be studied through a variety of perspectives: synchronically (by describing the structure of a language at a specific point in time) or diachronically (through the historical development of a language over a period of time), in monolinguals or in multilinguals, among children or among adults, in terms of how it is being learnt or how it was acquired, as abstract objects or as cognitive structures, through written texts or through oral elicitation, and finally through mechanical data collection or practical fieldwork.7

Linguistics emerged from the field of philology, of which some branches are more qualitative and holistic in approach.8 Today, philology and linguistics are variably described as related fields, subdisciplines, or separate fields of language study, but, by and large, linguistics can be seen as an umbrella term.9 Linguistics is also related to the philosophy of language, stylistics, rhetoric, semiotics, lexicography, and translation.

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. Trask, Robert Lawrence (2007). Language and Linguistics: The Key Concepts. Taylor & Francis. p. 156. ISBN 978-0-415-41359-6. Retrieved 21 September 2023. ↩

  2. Halliday, Michael A. K.; Jonathan Webster (2006). On Language and Linguistics. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. vii. ISBN 978-0-8264-8824-4. ↩

  3. “What is Linguistics? | Linguistic Society of America”. www.linguisticsociety.org. Archived from the original on 8 February 2022. Retrieved 8 February 2022. ↩

  4. Akmajian, Adrian; Richard A. Demers; Ann K. Farmer; Robert M. Harnish (2010). Linguistics (6th ed.). The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-51370-8. Retrieved 25 July 2012. ↩

  5. “Linguistics Program – Linguistics Program | University of South Carolina”. Archived from the original on 6 June 2022. Retrieved 3 June 2022. ↩

  6. “Studying Linguistics | Linguistic Society of America”. www.linguisticsociety.org. Archived from the original on 8 March 2022. Retrieved 1 April 2022. ↩

  7. François, Alex; Ponsonnet, Maïa (2013). “Descriptive Linguistics”. Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology: An Encyclopedia. pp. 184–187. doi:10.4135/9781452276311.n61. ISBN 978-1-4129-9963-2. ↩

  8. Crystal, David (1981). Clinical linguistics. Wien: Springer-Verlag. p. 3. ISBN 978-3-7091-4001-7. OCLC 610496980. What are the implications of the term “science” encountered in the definition on p. 1? Four aims of the scientific approach to language, often cited in introductory works on the subject, are comprehensiveness, objectivity, systematicness and precision. The contrast is usually drawn with the essentially non-scientific approach of traditional language studies—by which is meant the whole history of ideas about language from Plato and Aristotle down to the nineteenth century study of language history (comparative philology). ↩

  9. “Philosophy of Linguistics”. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2022. Archived from the original on 14 December 2022. Retrieved 3 June 2022. ↩

Link to original

Secondary

• • •