Linguistics

Broadly conceived, linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. (Lay people sometimes use the term linguistician, but as Aitchison 2003 points out, this is "too much of a tongue-twister to become generally accepted.")

Levels of theoretical linguistics

Theoretical linguistics is often divided into a number of separate areas, to be studied more or less independently. The following divisions are currently widely acknowledged:

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• Phonetics, the study of the different sounds that are employed across all human languages
• 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
• Semantics, the study of the meaning of words (lexical semantics), and how these combine to form the meanings of sentences
• Pragmatics, the study of how utterances are used (literally, figuratively, or otherwise) in communicative acts
• Historical linguistics, the study of languages whose historical relations are recognizable through similarities in vocabulary, word formation, and syntax
• Linguistic typology, the study of the grammatical features that are employed across all human languages
• Stylistics, the study of style in languages
• Discourse analysis, the study of sentences organised into texts

The independent significance of each of these areas is not universally acknowledged, however, and nearly all linguists would agree that the divisions overlap considerably. Nevertheless, each area has core concepts that foster significant scholarly inquiry and research.

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