What is Linguistics.?

the scientific study of language and its structure, including the study of grammar, syntax,
and phonetics. Specific branches of linguistics include sociolinguistics, dialectology,
psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, comparative linguistics, and structural
linguistics.

What is a language.?
It is a structural system of communication used by humans, based on speech and gesture,
signs, or often writing.
What is a language acquisition?
It is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language,
as well to produce and use words and sentences to communicate
What is theoretical linguistics?
It aims to explain the nature of human language in terms of basic underlaying principles
Applied linguistics is
Is the field of study that looks at how linguistics can help understand the real-life and society
problems?
The definitions of linguistics branches.?
Phonetics: The study of speech sound in their physical aspects.
Phonology; the study of speech sound in their cognitive aspects.
Morphology; the study of the formation of words.
Syntax; the study of formation of sentences.
Semantics; the study of meaning.
Pragmatics; the study of language use.
What is a second & foreign language?
foreign language is one not widely used in the learners’ immediate social context which
might be used for future travel or other cross-cultural communication situations, or studied as
a curricular requirement or elective in school, but with no immediate or necessary practical
application.

second language is typically an official or societally dominant language needed for

education, employment, and other basic purposes. It is often acquired by minority group
members or immigrants who speak another language natively.
What is an Approach & Method.?
An approach is a set of assumptions dealing with the nature of language, learning, and
teaching.
Method is described as an overall plan for systematic presentation of language based upon a
selected approach.
What is a communicative and grammatical competence.?
CC; refers to learner's ability to use language to communicate successfully. Acquired in the
process of natural communication or specially organized learning.
GC; it refers to the unconscious knowledge of grammar that allows a speaker to use and
understand a language.
What is a behaviorist theory.?
Behaviorism, also known as behavioral psychology, is a theory of learning based on the idea
that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning. Conditioning occurs through interaction
with the environment. Behaviorist believes that our environmental stimuli shape out actions.
What is a Mentalism theory.?
The mentalist learning theory emphasizes the role of the mind in language acquisition by
arguing that humans are born with an innate and biological capacity to learn language, this
theory was not designed to have pedagogical implication for second language learning. This
theory was spearheaded by Noam Chomsky and arose in response to B.F. Skinner's radical
behaviorism.
What is a Descriptive theory in linguistics.?
The principle of the language is presented through description of that language, basically
these theories investigate the form and functions of the language, and it is the study of the
description of the internal phonological and grammatical and semantic structure of a
language. And the main concern is to find out the unconscious rules that people follow while
using a language.
What is the difference between descriptive and perspective approaches.?
These two approaches are different in a way that one is based on telling people what rules they should
follow which is the prescriptive approach and the other, descriptive approach, is about finding how a
language is used by the people that speak it. Another difference is also in the grammar of these two
approaches. The descriptive grammar “attempts to describe the rules internalised by a speaker of that
language” according to Fromkin et al. (2012).