User:Norasnie12122002

Introduction to Linguistics



 * It is the science of language or the scientific study of language.
 * Linguistics is mainly concerned with spoken language.
 * Language is a system of communication. It is the phenomenon of vocal and written communication among human beings generally in ordinary usage.
 * Is descriptive, not prescriptive
 * Its primary goal is to describe languages as they are spoken. What people actually say not what they should say is the concern of linguistics.
 * Linguistics is empirically grounded. It is based on actual language data, including observations of language use by speakers and their intuitions about their language.

Subject Matter of Linguistics:

 * Phonetics - a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign
 * Phonology - the study of the patterns of sounds in a language and across languages.




 * Morphology - the study of words and their parts.




 * Syntax - the arrangement of words in sentences, clauses, and phrases, and the study of the formation of sentences and the relationship of their component parts.
 * Semantics - the message conveyed by words, sentences, and symbols in a context. Also called lexical meaning or semantic meaning.
 * Pragmatics- a field of linguistics concerned with what a speaker implies and a listener infers based on contributing factors like the situational context, the individuals’ mental states, the preceding dialogue, and other elements.
 * Psycholinguistics - the discipline that investigates and describes the psychological processes that make it possible for humans to master and use language.
 * Neurolinguistics- the study of how language is represented in the brain.
 * Language acquisition - the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language.