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.")

Research areas of linguistics

• etymology
• historical-comparative linguistics
• lexicography
• lexicology
• phonetics
• phonology
• pragmatics
• semantics
• syntax
• theoretical linguistics
• computational linguistics
• corpus linguistics
• descriptive linguistics
• linguistic typology
• semiotics