Universidade de Braslia LET - Departamento de Lnguas Estrangeiras e Traduo

Arlindo Bruno Arajo Gregoldo Mat.: 11/0008677

Fields of Linguistics

Braslia/DF 2011

The Fields of Linguistics Braslia 2011.

The Fields of Linguistics Table of Contents

This paper goes through twelve different fields of Linguistics studies, ordered as the following relation, with special attention given to items 3 and 9: 1 Applied Linguistics; 2 Biolinguistics; 3 Cognitive Linguistics; 4 Comparative Linguistics; 5 Computational Linguistics; 6 Forensic Linguistics; 7 Geolinguistics; 8 Historical Linguistics; 9 Neurolinguistics; 10 Political Linguistics; 11 Psycholinguistics; 12 Sociolinguistics;

Motivational quote: Languages are called living because they constantly change.
John Kozy Ph.D. Philosopy and Compared Literature by The Pennsylvania State University

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1 Applied Linguistics:
This field of linguistic studies has not got quite a much specified methodology. To deal with Applied Linguistics, in general, is to deal with turning linguistic knowledge into tools to improve linguistic relationships intrinsic to many fields of modern society. For example, it might help to get to more specific conclusions regarding Second Language Teaching by applying Linguistics traditional areas such as syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology. By examining, par example, how students of SLT assimilate new vocabulary or new syntactic structures it is possible to elaborate an error rapport containing described mistakes often made and tools to not let them happen in future occasions. Professor Vivian Cook, from Newcastle University, writes a piece about what Applied Linguistics is. She chooses to begin with a quite humoristic situation:
If you tell someone youre an applied linguist, they look at you with bafflement. If you amplify its to do with linguistics they still look baffled. You know, linguistics the science of language? Ah so you speak lots of languages? Well no, just English. So what do you actually do? Well I look at how people acquire languages and how we can teach them better. At last light begins to dawn and they tell you a story about how badly they were taught French at school. 1

By that, she wants to explain how difficult it is to simply state what Applied Linguitics is about with a short, vague definition. It is necessary to know what it is being applied to so that it is possible to make its purposes, objectives and methodology clear. Resuming, she poses: Applied linguistics then means many things to many people. Discovering what a book or a course in applied linguistics is about involves reading the small print to discover its orientation.1

2 Biolinguistics
In later 1950s, linguist Noam Chomsky published a slim volume showing some of his results of his research published in Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (Chomsky, 1955). Those results indicated a new perspective upon Linguistics theorization, emphasizing the main goal of Generative Linguistics: that language, as a human speech capability, is ruled by synthetic structures, which guides the way sentences are built. By that, the linguist got to bring into discussions matters such as what is knowledge of language and how is it acquired, amongst others. Since then, a strong supposition was raised: that language is a phenomenon of humans brain.

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Following such occurrence, some speculation has been made concerning the matter whether till which point language is biologically defined, and thus why is that a human restrictedly capability. According to Cedric Boeckx & Kleanthes K. Grohmann, within the editorial of their released book Biolinguistics (2007), the term Biolinguistics implies two different senses: a weak one, which is usually taken by Chomsky Generative theory preceptors and analyses the possibilities of speech, and a second sense, a stronger one, which refers to attempts to provide explicit answers to questions that necessarily require the combination of linguistic insights and insights from related disciplines (evolutionary biology, genetics, neurology, psychology, etc.)2. According to Boeckx & Grohmann, the term Biolinguistics coined in 1974, firstly appearing in the Handbook of Biolinguistics o (Meader & Muyskens, 1950) as a discipline which looks upon language study as a natural science, and hence regard language as an integrated group of biological processes []. This group seeks an explanation of all language phenomena in the functional integration of tissue and environment (Meader & Muyskens, 1950: 9).

3 Cognitive Linguistics:
Cognitive Linguistics came up after the work of numerous researches in late 1970s, who were strongly interested in the relation of language and mind. However, they could not agree with the simplistic view, which was a trend by that time, where language acquisition was restricted to syntactic structures and paradigms. Otherwise, they would fundament their researches on more broaden angles, examining the relation of language with external elements such as cognitive principles and mechanisms not specific to language, including principles of human categorization; pragmatic and interactional principles; and functional principles in general, such as iconicity and economy.3 Various linguists dedicated their work to Cognitive Linguistics; among them, Charles Fillmore, George Lakogg, Ronald Langacker and Wallace Chafe were the ones who developed this very particular methodology based on a set of phenomena never minded before: the meaning of words. According to Suzanne Kemmer, one of the important assumptions shared by all of these

scholars is that meaning is so central to language that it must be a primary focus of study.
By the 1990s, Cognitive Linguistic had arisen strong as a specialization within Linguistics. In the Handbook of Pragmatics it is briefly stated under the entry for Cognitive Linguistics (Geeraerts, 1995. Pg. 111-112):

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Because cognitive linguistics sees language as embedded in the overall cognitive capacities of man, topics of special interest for cognitive linguistics include: the structural characteristics of natural language categorization (such as prototypicality, systematic polysemy, cognitive models, mental imagery and metaphor); the functional principles of linguistic organization (such as iconicity and naturalness); the conceptual interface between syntax and semantics (as explored by cognitive grammar and construction grammar); the experiential and pragmatic background of language-in-use; and the relationship between language and thought, including questions about relativism and conceptual universals.

4 Comparative Linguistics:
According to online Encyclopdia Britannica Academic Edition, Comparative Linguistics is nothing but the study of the relationships or correspondences between two or more languages and the techniques used to discover whether the languages have a common ancestor3. Formerly named Comparative Grammar or Comparative Philology, this linguistic field seems to take care of mutual aspects of languages and aspects that might have been mutual someday, but that are not anymore due to diachronic changing processes. It is very important to regard the Neogrammarian principle in which laws governing sound mutation over time do not change. Still within Encyclopdia Britannica entry it is given the example of this method a comparison between English and Italian, firstly assuming that compared words have not been borrowed from another language. Picking up the words foot/piede, father/padre and fish/pisce it is possible to establish a seemingly phonetical mutation from the /p/ sound to /f/ one. Because regular correspondences between other words with this same sound pair are vastly numerous to be coincidental, it does not seem fair to ignore a possible proto-derivation of both languages from a supposed mother language in this case, the Proto-Indo-European. In his opening lecture for the Theoretical and Comparative Linguistics course, held in February 15 2006, Professor Sten Vikner, from University of Aarhus, Danmark, explains that the job of Comparative Linguistics is to find out about differences between various languages and also to struggle to discover both which kind of variation is possible between languages, and which are not. Also, in this way, it contributes to our knowledge about the powers and limitations of the human brain. An explicitly comparative angle also brings out more sharply the specific characteristics of each language than when each language is treated in isolation.4.

5 Computational Linguistics:
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The subfield of Linguistic named Computacional Linguistics has been seen as a way to associate the advent of computational language to the theory of Generative by Noam Chomsky. The theorist recognizes language, in its most general sense, as a system of syntactic possibilities which might be defragmented and recombined accordingly to the needs and intentions of the speaker, always respecting the semantic boundaries. Thus, ever since its conception, the Faculty of Language (as Chomsky names the capability to acquire and express language of human beings) seems to be all about a computational and modular perspective, in which it is possible to build paradigms and exchange its parts since the meaning remains plausible. Within his masters degree project, professor Pablo P. Feliciano de Faria ponders:

Podemos dizer que um dos principais fatores responsveis - seno o principal por esse vis computacional a caracterstica recursiva da linguagem: atravs da manipulao de um conjunto finito de elementos, a linguagem pode gerar uma infinita quantidade de expresses, como em A Maria disse que o Pedro falou que Paulo viu que...

He goes further: because of this feature, the internalized linguistic knowledge of a man has been seen as an autonomous computational system, responding to whichever the environment requests from the speaker. As Computational Science is in high growth, theories regarding learnability, formal languages, computational complexity, neural webs, etc., have also been developed providing new ways to ascertain possible logical consequences. In the face of such progresses, it is possible to conclude that human mind ends up functioning as a decoding apparatus capable to establish paradigms and recognize information within them. From this statement comes, as an example, the ones ability to read a text where letters have been systematically swapped by numbers, namely n04m ch0m5ky w45 b0rn 1n th3 tw3nt13th c3ntury. From the recognizable similarity between letter and number, one can adapt to this correspondence which is a key-word in this context. Then it becomes all about a process of correspondence between paradigms and their elements.

6 Forensic Linguistics:
The discipline of forensic linguistics has been gaining force throughout the past 20 years, as it has been more and more developed by scholars interested generally in Linguistics. It is
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currently heavily applied in civil sphere related to the resolution of crimes using techniques such as Analysis of Discourse, voice and handwriting identification, etc., to provide evidences intending to solve crimes. In the Introduction for his work Some Forensic Applications of Descriptive Linguistics (2005), Malcolm Coulthard states:
Thirty seven years ago Jan Svartvik published The Evans Statements: A Case For Forensic Linguistics in which he demonstrated that disputed parts of a series of four statements dictated to police officers by a young man called Timothy Evans, which incriminated him in the murder of his wife and daughter, had a grammatical style measurably different from the style of the uncontested parts of the statements and a new discipline was born.

Yet there was no attempt to turn that into a formal area of science, this event marks the beginning of what would come to Forensic Linguistic. As affirms Mr. Coulthard, this kind of job was usually taken by intellectuals, as a form to challenge themselves into their own knowledge in Linguistics and mostly requiring their creativity rather than any kind of methodology. Usually forensic linguists are required to answer key-questions that are directly related to authenticity in written documents (e.g.: anonymous letters, hate mail, suicide notes genuine and false , threat letter, wills, etc.). Thus, those linguists draw on knowledge/techniques as of macrolinguistics fields: lexicon, semantics, phonetics, phonology, morphosyntax, etc. Exemplifying forensic linguistics performance, Coulthard cites a case in wich a man with this very particular Indian accent in trial says he got onto a train and then shot a man to kill whereas, through linguistic assumption, a phonetician was able to prove that what the man said was actually showed a man [the] ticket.

7 Geolinguistics:
Geolinguistics is an interdisciplinary field of Linguistics shared between this science and Geography. It deals with studying languages regarding a more geographic context. For example, it analyzes differences of accents and dialects inside the same region, and how it might have something to do with geographysical aspects. Until late 1960s, geolinguistic researches would develop mainly under Linguistics views, so that it would not by any mean be strictly related to Geography itself. Doctor David Brittain, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Southampton, dedicates a brief chapter of his book Dialectology
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to Geolinguistics. Within the reasons for which it was needed to create a proper field within General Linguistic for that matter, he says:

Almost without exception, and rather than having been critically explored as a potential social variable, space has been treated as a blank canvas onto which sociolinguistic processes are painted. It has been unexamined, untheorised and its role in shaping and being shaped by language untested.
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8 Historical Linguistics:
A very basic question within Historical Linguistic is How did a language get to the point where it gets unrecognizable from its previous aspect?. This is the branch of Linguistics that foresees connections between different languages in the world and their historical mutation. It considers a diachronical perspective in analyzing different stages from the same language, e.g. the Old English to current English. It is very clear that languages change because of its very own nature: Languages are called living because they constantly change says John Kozy. A common current English reader might not be able at all to read any exert from an Old English text, as much as nowadays there are words that were coined to fit into new contexts, as long as science keeps on its pace to evolution. Quotidian words for regular English speakers such as toaster and submarine werent invented at our great grand-parents time, so that they would never figure them out if they would step by them in a fictional situation. This is to prove how humans are constantly changing what and how they speak. Cognate words are great examples to summarize the relation between different languages and their changing processes during time. In this sense, if one compares the words father (English), vater (German), padre (Spanish), fadar (Gothic) there is a great assumption that those languages come from the same stream, which supposedly nowadays we take as the Proto-IndoEuropean where the word pter would stand for the same meanings as mentioned before.

9 Neurolinguistics:
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This field is dedicated to study linguistic processes related to discourse and how is it elaborated within the human mind. Language isnt something easy to understand or to define. Instead, it is shaped by history, society, culture, perception, and how does the person reacts to all this exposure. Furthermore, it is interesting to Neurolinguistics to analyze the relation idiom versus language, brain versus mind, thought versus memory, interlocution between two people, body language versus spoken language, etc., all this related to the way brain is able to receive and decode such phenomena. According to brazilian researcher Flavia Geraldini Beltramin in her monography, A ND[Discoursive Neurolinguistics] se interessa por todas as formas de manifestao da linguagem, verbais ou no-verbais, incluindo nesta os gestos, as expresses faciais e a prpria postura corporal em toda a sua complexidade.6 From the 60s to 70s on, as it had been developed theories as Discourse Analysis and the Pragmatics, some aspects, before considered external to language, such as context, interrelation of interlocutors and subjectivity has been put in scene playing a great new role into science. Therefore, other theories and other practices have been taking in account. For example, Maria Irma Hadler Coudry, in her Ph.D. conclusion thesis, developed several researches within Neurolinguistics with aphasiologic patients, taking notes of how would they react to metalinguistic tests through therapeutic accompaniment. Even if it doesnt seem much, the single perspective of studying isolated cases, regarding all the possible specificities of a patient, was already in advance for Neurolinguistics. This branch of Linguistics is also based in classic neuropsychological Models such as Franz Joseph Gall (1758 - 1828), who brought the first proposal to localize mental functions in different parts of the brain. Continuingly to those studies came neurophysiologist Pierre Flourens, who began circa 1825 his research on lesions in animal brain, which led him to virtuously demonstrate, by the very first time in history, the correlation of different brain parts with different functions. Sonia Maria Sellin Bordin, master in Linguistics by the University of Campinas, on her pursuit for the masters degree, emphasizes how important discoveries in the neurolinguistic area helped to acquire a broader perspective on pathology studies: by recognizing that different parts of the brain are responsible for different functions, it is possible to break up with the notion that opposes normal to pathologic, what does not permit pathology to be something in the middle of both. Hence, sempre que o aparelho cerebral for privado - por leses congnitas e/ou adquiridas de suas estruturas e funes, a patologia se estabelece (Coudry e Freire, 2005).(op. cit. pg. 13). Master Bordin utilized Neurolinguistics in her masters degree dissertation to analyze how does JD, a 10 year old boy with presumed diagnosis of autism, works linguistically under a
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Discursive Neurolinguistics perspective, involving both clinic practice and theorization upon language, particularly regarding autism. She also betakes to Phonoaudiology, Neurology, Neuropsychology and Langue Acquisition to ground her analyses.

10 Political Linguistics
This subfield of Linguistics aims to analyse how does macro-linguistic aspects - semantics, phonetics, phonology, morphosyntax might be applied in political contexts. It came up in the 1960s supported by practices such as Analysis of Discourse and Political Rethoric. Along with Dialectology, under an anthropological lens, this political approach concerns on assuming the existence of dialects and what role they play on their respective region. Recognizing such differences might be extremely important to answer questions such as what kind of prejudices permeates the collective consciousness and which implications they bring within sociologic relationships. In 1995 it was held in Belgium the Annual Conference of the Linguistic Society of Belgium. For the first time, the main discussion topic selected was within Political Linguistics, which was such a defiance. Jan Blommaert, one of the organizers, says in her article for the Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 11th edition (1997)
When we decided to hold the 1995 Annual Conference of the Linguistic Society of Belgium on the topic of political linguistics, we knew that we were to some extent doing something dangerous. We were toying with terminology. Our intention was to have a conference in which the interplay between language, in its most general sense, and politics, also in its most general sense, could be discussed.7

The key element, as she herself says, was the general qualification. It was not intended to restrict discussions only under a very specific actuation area; rather than that, the meaning of the conference was to invite all scholars dealing with Linguistic and interested on political do expose their thoughts, point of views, researches and assumptions. It was essential to our purpose to be able to get a panoramic view of a series of developments in that field, and so to seek coherence, structure, but also confrontation and conflict.

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11 Psycholinguistics:
The science is basically related to how does human mind receives and comprehends language stimuli, considering stimulus either by verbal or non-verbal codes. The purpose of psycholinguistic research is to uncover universal processes that govern the development, use and breakdown of language.7 But theres a catch: as those studies can only be effectuated through a given subfield denominated as a particular language, e.g. English, Hindi, Hungarian, etc., it is difficult to define whether the processes behind language is restricted to this subfield or to general linguistic capability. Some strategies can be applied in order to identify the processes that lead language organization, mainly regarding cross-linguistic studies, in which the same methodology is applied to different people speaking their mother-tongue. Par example, it is possible to work with children by asking them to respond to incentives regarding comparisons of tense and aspect in narratives (Berman & Slobin, 1994), the use of path verbs vs. manner verbs to describe an action-packed cartoon (Slobin 1996), the acquisition of spatial locatives (Bowerman & Choi 1994), and differential use to word order, semantics and grammatical morphology to assign agent-object relations in a Who did the action? task.8 In short, anything related to the process of sending information and captivating it, as much as the circumstances that rule language application, might be analyzed by Psycholinguistics.

12 Sociolinguistics:
Why do men and women, adolescents and adults, taxi drivers and solicitors speak differently? Why are some accents highly respected and others despised? How do we choose our words and our languages? This is how Florian Coulmas, Director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo, begins his book Sociolinguistics: The Study of Speakers Choices(2005) and those are the questions that currently are asked within Sociolinguistics studies. Sociolinguistics is the study of how language serves and is shaped by the social nature of human beings. In its broadest conception, sociolinguistics researches on the diverse ways in which language and society relate to each other. This great field of questioning requires and combines insights from numerous subjects, including sociology, psychology, philosophy and anthropology.

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This sub-field on Linguistics observes the interconnection of language and humanity, where communication plays a big role so that it can happen. The basic principle in Sociolinguistics studies is that language is continuous and it changes day by day. This leads to the fact that it is not something homogeneous, but previously a mix of social concepts: habits, preferences, cultural inconicity, prejudices, life experience, social associations, etc. Its considered to be extremely rare the a group sharing the same values could possibly share the same language not the idiom , because language is beforehand personal and intimate. This discipline also interacts with different other subfields in Linguistic. Historical Sociolinguistics, par example, examines how the usage of the personal pronoun thou has changed to you from the 16th century. A good example of a direct action involving Sociolinguistic is published in the 4th volume of the International Journal on Multicultural Societies, 2002, under the title of Protecting Endangered Minority Languages: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Eda Derhemin from University of Illinois, one of the authors, explain one of the main foci of the paperwork:

This issue is devoted to problems of endangered languages, particularly endangered languages spoken by minorities, focusing on the sociolinguistic study of the causes, circumstances and results of endangerment, and other structural and social processes related to endangered languages and to their survival.9

References:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/Writings/Shorts/WhatisALl.htm, accessed in Sep 20th, 2011. http://tilburguniversity.edu/research/institutes-and-research-groups/tilps/philli/boecks.pdf, accessed in Sep 20th, 2011. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/129646/comparative-linguistics, accessed in Sep 20th, 2011. This lecture might be found at http://www.hum.au.dk/engelsk/engsv/papers/viknerinaugural-ms.pdf, accessed in Sep 20th, 2011.
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Britain, David. (2005). Geolinguistics and Linguistic Diffusion. In U. Ammon, N. Dittmar, K. Mattheier & P. Trudgill (eds.), Sociolinguistics: International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.' Beltramin, Flvia Geraldini. Concepes de Linguagem e de Prxis subjacentes terminologia Neuropsicolgica e Neurolingstica. Campinas, 2010, pg. 1.
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The original link for this document seems to be blocked to views. However, might be possible to access it through Google Documents Quick View option. Procedure taken in Sept 21st 2011. Bates, Elizabeth; Devescovi, Antonella; and Wulfeck, Beverly. Psycholinguistics: A Cross-Language Perspective. San Diego, 2001, pg. 396.
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http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001387/138795e.pdf, accessed in Sep 20th, 2011.

Bibliography:
Berman, R.A., & Slobin, D.I.. Relating events in narrative: A cross-linguistic developmental study [in collaboration with Ayhan Aksu-Koc et al.]. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum 1994. Bordin, Sonia Maria Sellin. Fale com ele: um estudo neurolingstico do autismo. Campinas, So Paulo - 2006. Bowerman, M., & Choi, S. Linguistic and nonlinguistic determinants of spatial semantic development: A crosslinguistic study of English, Korean, and Dutch. Paper presented at Boston University Conference on Language Development January 1994. Coulthard , Malcolm. Some Forensic Applications of Descriptive Linguistics. The University of Birmingham, Birmingham 2005. Faria, Pablo. Propriedades das lnguas naturais e o processo de aquisio: reflexes a partir da implementao do modelo em Berwick (1985). Campinas, So Paulo 2009. Franchi, C. Linguagem-atividade Constitutiva. In Almanaque 5, So Paulo 1977 (p. 9-27).

Kemmer, Suzanne. About Cognitive Linguistics - Historical Background. Available in http://www.cognitivelinguistics.org/cl.shtml. Accessed in Sept 21st 2011.
Slobin, D. Two ways to travel: Verbs of motion in English and Spanish. In M. Shibatani & S.A. Thompson (Eds.), Grammatical constructions: Their form and meaning (pp. 195-219). Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996. http://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/36067/frontmatter/9780521836067_frontmatter.pdf

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Accessed in Sep 21th, 2011. http://homepages.tesco.net/~david.britain/7.pdf Accessed in Sep 21th, 2011. http://www.bae.unicamp.br/Apresentacao.pdf Accessed in Sep 21th, 2011. http://www.csufextension.org/ueeimages/certificates/ForensicLinguisticsApproach.pdf Accessed in Sep 20th, 2011. http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/gordon/20/ling20historical.pdf Accessed in Sep 21th, 2011. http://www.mesacc.edu/dept/d10/asb/language/history1.html Accessed in Sep 21th, 2011. http://www.thetext.co.uk/learn_about_forensic_linguistics.html, accessed in Sep 20th, 2011. Accessed in Sep 20th, 2011.

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