What is Linguistics?

 Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Linguists apply the scientific

method to conduct formal studies of speech sounds, grammatical structures,
and meaning across the world’s 6,000+ languages. (Linguistic Society of
America)

Linguistics in Everyday Life

Whether it’s telling a joke, naming a baby, using voice recognition software, or
helping a relative who’s had a stroke, you’ll find the study of language reflected in
almost everything you do. Linguists study meaning, discourse, and many other
language aspects that you have always wondered about.

Studying Linguistics
When you study linguistics at any level, you gain insight into one of the most
fundamental parts of being human- the ability to communicate through
language. You can study every aspect of language from functional theory to
language acquisition, and computational linguistics to psycholinguistics. Studying
linguistics enables you to understand how language works, and how it is used,
developed and preserved over time.

The Science of Linguistics

Linguists are not only polyglots, grammarians, and word lovers. They are
researchers dedicated to the systematic study of language who apply the scientific
method by making observations, testing hypotheses, and developing theories. The
science of language encompasses more than sounds, grammar, and
meaning. When you study linguistics, you are at the crossroads of every discipline. 

Linguistics as a Profession
An undergraduate or advanced degree in linguistics can prepare you for a career in
a variety of different fields, including but not limited to: teaching, publishing,
national security, international affairs, policy, forensics, medicine and technology.

Theoretical Linguistics
Phonetics
The study of the production and perception of speech sounds is a branch of
linguistics called phonetics, studied by phoneticians. The study of how languages
treat these sounds is called phonology, covered in the next chapter. While these
two fields have considerable overlap, it should soon become clear that they differ in
important ways.

Phonetics is the systematic study of the human ability to make and hear sounds
which use the vocal organs of speech, especially for producing oral language. It is
usually divided into the three branches of (1) articulatory, (2) acoustic and (3)
auditory phonetics. It is also traditionally differentiated from (though overlaps with)
the field of phonology, which is the formal study of the sound systems (phonologies)
of languages, especially the universal properties displayed in ALL languages, such
as the psycholinguistic aspects of phonological processing and acquisition.

Phonology
The basic unit of study of phonology is the phoneme, which may be defined as sets
of phones which function as one unit in a language, and provide contrast between
different words. In other words, a phoneme is a category that speakers of a
language put certain sounds into. For instance, returning to the Tok Pisin example
above, the sounds [s] and [t] would both belong to the phoneme /t/. (In the IPA,
phonemes are conventionally enclosed in forward slashes //.)
As another example, try pronouncing the English words keys and schools carefully,
paying close attention to the variety of [k] in each. You should find that in the first
there is a noticeable puff of air (aspiration), while in the second it is absent. These
words may be written more precisely phonetically as [kʰiz] and [skulz]. However,
since aspiration never changes the meaning of a word, both of these sounds belong
to the phoneme /k/, and so the phonetic representations of these words are /kiz/
and /skulz/.
It should be evident why it is appropriate to refer to the phoneme as a level of
abstraction away from the phone. We have removed a layer of information which,
while interesting in itself, does not interact in many aspects of a language.
The phonemic inventory of a language is the collection of phonemes in a language.
We looked at English's in the last chapter.

Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of the structure of

words, practiced by morphologists.
This chapter will largely follow the morpheme-based theory of morphology, but a
description of other views of morphology will be presented at the end.
Morphemes
A morpheme is roughly defined as the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic
meaning. For example, the word boy cannot be broken down into any further unit
of meaning. That's why there's a different kind of example like:
b;
o;
y;
bo;
by and
oy – none of which mean anything. We say that boy is made of only one morpheme.
But the word antigovernment can be broken down into:
anti- = against
govern = to rule/administrate
-ment = noun suffix
Therefore, we say that antigovernment is made of three morphemes.
One should be careful not to break a single morpheme into multiple constituent
morphemes. This is a common error in the analysis of some languages, such as
Chinese. The word 犹豫 (yóuyù), meaning hesitate, is a notorious example. As most
Chinese characters represent a single morpheme, linguists before the Qing Dynasty
believed that all characters represented a single morpheme. As a result, the word
犹豫 has become the subject of much nonsensical speculation. One scholar during
the Tang Dynasty believed that it originated from the description of a deer-like
monkey that would look left and right before climbing a tree. Later generations
discovered that 犹豫 was, in fact, a single disyllabic morpheme, disproving these
odd claims.
Affixes are our workhorse morphemes—the tools we use again and again to
assemble new words. There are several kinds of affixes:
Suffixes are morphemes that attach to the end of a word. Examples are -
ion in motion and -ate in investigate. Suffixes are written with an initial hyphen.
Prefixes attach to the beginning of a word. Examples
are re- in redo and un- in unthinkable. Prefixes are written with a terminal
hyphen.
Infixes. Although English generally does not have infixes, or morphemes that go "in
the middle" of a word, other languages do. An exception in English might be -
bloody- in the following:
Q: Are you going to the concert tonight?
A: Absobloodylutely.
Infixes are written with initial and terminal hyphens, as above.
Circumfixes are affixes that "surround" the word, attaching to the beginning and
end of the word. Although English has few examples of this type of affix, other
languages use it. The circumfix is probably most widely known from the German
past participle (ge- -t for regular verbs). Probably the only circumfixes in English
are en- -en in enlighten and em- -en in embolden, which are essentially the same
circumfix, as we will see below. In older usage, however, the present participle
could be formed using the circumfix a- -ing: a- -ing in a-flying or a- -ing in a-
caroling. Circumfixes are written with initial and terminal hyphens.

The field of syntax looks at the mental 'rules' that we have for forming sentences
and phrases. In English, for instance, it is grammatical to say 'I speak English', but
ungrammatical to say 'English speak I' — this is because of a rule which says that
subjects normally precede verbs which precede the object.
Semantics is the study of meaning.
There are two types of meaning: conceptual meaning and associative meaning. The
conceptual meaning of the word sea is something that is large, filled with saltwater,
and so on. This meaning is true for everyone. The associative meaning might be
pirates, shipwreck, storms, battle and so on. These associations vary from person
to person. The conceptual meaning of concise is expressed in few words,
but concise being a good thing is part of the associative meaning.

Pragmatics is the study of how context affects meaning. There are two types of
context: physical context (such as where a sign is located) and linguistic
context (such as preceding sentences in a passage).
Deixis means 'pointing'. Sometimes, in discourse, you may 'point' to a person, time
or place. Context is always necessary to understand deixis. Consider this example:

He saw a dog here last night.

There are three types of deictic expressions in this sentence:

Person deixis: He refers to a person, understood by the listener in context.
Spatial deixis: Here refers to a place, understood by the listener in context.
Temporal deixis: Last night refers to the night before the utterance of the
sentence, which also depends on context.
Pragmatics adds the importance of context to the study of language. Discourse
analysis takes things further, studying communication, such as dialogue or written
texts.

Linguistics is concerned with the nature of language and communication. It deals

both with the study of particular languages, and the search for general properties
common to all languages or large groups of languages. It includes the following
subareas:

phonetics (the study of the production, acoustics and hearing of speech sounds)
phonology (the patterning of sounds)
morphology (the structure of words)
syntax (the structure of sentences)
semantics (meaning)
pragmatics (language in context)