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COMPARATIVE LINGUISTICS (originally comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness implies a common origin or proto-language, and comparative linguistics aims to construct language families, to reconstruct proto-languages and specify the changes that have resulted in the documented languages. To maintain a clear distinction between attested and reconstructed forms, comparative linguists prefix an asterisk to any form that is not found in surviving texts. A number of methods for carrying out language classification have been developed, ranging from simple inspection to computerised hypothesis testing. Such methods have gone through a long process of development. The fundamental technique of comparative linguistics is to compare phonological systems, morphological systems, syntax and the lexicon of two or more languages using techniques such as the comparative method. In principle, every difference between two related languages should be explicable to a high degree of plausibility, and systematic changes, for example in phonological or morphological systems, are expected to be highly regular (i.e. consistent). In practice, the comparison may be more restricted, e.g. just to the lexicon. In some methods it may be possible to reconstruct an earlier proto-language. Although the proto-languages reconstructed by the comparative method are hypothetical, a reconstruction may have predictive power. The most notable example of this is Saussure's proposal that the Indo-European consonant system contained laryngeals, a type of consonant attested in no Indo-European language known at the time. The hypothesis was vindicated with the discovery of Hittite, which proved to have exactly the consonants Saussure had hypothesized in the environments he had predicted. Where languages are derived from a very distant ancestor, and are thus more distantly related, the comparative method becomes impracticable.[1] In particular, attempting to relate two reconstructed protolanguages by the comparative method has not generally produced results that have met with wide acceptance.[citation needed] The method has also not been very good at unambiguously identifying sub-families and different scholars[who?] have produced conflicting results, for example in Indo-European.[citation needed] A number of methods based on statistical analysis of vocabulary have been developed to try and overcome this limitation, such as lexicostatistics and mass comparison. The former uses lexical cognates like the comparative method but the latter uses only lexical similarity. The theoretical basis of such methods is that vocabulary items can be matched without a detailed language reconstruction and that comparing enough vocabulary items will negate individual inaccuracies. Thus they can be used to determine relatedness but not to determine the proto-language. Historical linguistics (also called diachronic linguistics) is the study of language change. It has five main concerns: to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and determine their relatedness, grouping them into language families (comparative linguistics) to develop general theories about how and why language changes to describe the history of speech communities to study the history of words, i.e. etymology. 3 Sub-fields of study o 3.1 Comparative linguistics o 3.2 Etymology o 3.3 Dialectology o 3.4 Phonology o 3.5 Morphology o 3.6 Syntax
APPLIED LINGUISTICS is an interdisciplinary field of study that identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems. Some of the academic fields related to applied linguistics are education, linguistics, psychology, computer science, anthropology, and sociology
Major branches of applied linguistics include bilingualism and multilingualism, computer-mediated communication (CMC), conversation analysis, contrastive linguistics, deaf linguistics, language assessment, literacies, discourse analysis, language pedagogy, second language acquisition, lexicography, language planning and policies, stylistics, pragmatics, forensic linguistics, and translation. Major journals of the field include Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, International Review of Applied Linguistics, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Issues in Applied Linguistics, and Language Learning. NEUROLINGUISTICS is the study of the neural mechanisms in the human brain that control the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language. As an interdisciplinary field, neurolinguistics draws methodology and theory from fields such as neuroscience, linguistics, cognitive science, neurobiology, communication disorders, neuropsychology, and computer science. Researchers are drawn to the field from a variety of backgrounds, bringing along a variety of experimental techniques as well as widely varying theoretical perspectives. Much work in neurolinguistics is informed by models in psycholinguistics and theoretical linguistics, and is focused on investigating how the brain can implement the processes that theoretical and psycholinguistics propose are necessary in producing and comprehending language. Neurolinguists study the physiological mechanisms by which the brain processes information related to language, and evaluate linguistic and psycholinguistic theories, using aphasiology, brain imaging, electrophysiology, and computer modeling. BIOLINGUISTICS is the study of the biology and evolution of language. It is a highly interdisciplinary field, including linguists, biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, mathematicians, and others. By shifting the focus of investigation in linguistics to a comprehensive scheme that embraces natural sciences, it seeks to yield a framework by which we can understand the fundamentals of the faculty of language. ETHNOLINGUISTICS OR CULTURAL LINGUISTICS is a field of linguistics which studies the relationship between language and culture, and the way different ethnic groups perceive the world. It is the combination between ethnology and linguistics. The former refers to the way of life of an entire community i.e. all the characteristics which distinguish one community from the other. Those characteristics make the cultural aspects of a community or a society.
Ethnolinguists study the way perception and conceptualization influences language, and show how this is linked to different cultures and societies. An example is the way spatial orientation is expressed in various cultures.[1][2] In many societies, words for the cardinal directions East and West are derived from terms for sunrise/sunset. The nomenclature for cardinal directions of Eskimo speakers of Greenland, however, is based on geographical landmarks such as the river system and one's position on the coast. Similarly, the Yurok lack the idea of cardinal directions; they orient themselves with respect to their principal geographic feature, the Klamath River. The term cultural linguistics is sometimes used synonymously with the term ethnolinguistics.[3] In addition, Cultural Linguistics refers to a related branch of linguistics that explores the relationship between language, culture, and conceptualisation.[4] Cultural linguistics draws on, but is not limited to, the theoretical notions and analytical tools of cognitive linguistics and cognitive anthropology. Central to the approach of cultural linguistics are notions of 'cultural schema' and 'cultural model'. It examines how various features of language encode cultural schemas and cultural models.[5] In cultural linguistics, language is viewed as deeply entrenched in the group-level, cultural cognition of communities of speakers. Thus far, the approach of cultural linguistics has been adopted in several areas of applied linguistic research, including intercultural communication, second language learning, and World Englishes.[6]
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ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS is the study of the relations between language and culture and the relations between human biology, cognition and language. This strongly overlaps the field of linguistic anthropology, which is the branch of anthropology that studies humans through the languages that they use. Whatever one calls it, this field has had a major impact in the studies of visual perception (especially colour) and bioregional democracy, both of which are concerned with distinctions that are made in languages about perceptions of the surroundings. Conventional linguistic anthropology also has implications for sociology and self-organization of peoples. Study of the Penan people, for instance, reveals that their language employs six different and distinct words, all of whose best English translation is "we"[citation needed]. Anthropological linguistics studies these distinctions, and relates them to types of societies and to actual bodily adaptation to the senses, much as it studies distinctions made in languages regarding the colours of the rainbow: seeing the tendency to increase the diversity of terms, as evidence that there are distinctions that bodies in this environment must make, leading to situated knowledge and perhaps a situated ethics, whose final evidence is the differentiated set of terms used to denote "we". COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical and/or rulebased modeling of natural language from a computational perspective. This modeling is not limited to any particular field of linguistics. Traditionally, computational linguistics was usually performed by computer scientists who had specialized in the application of computers to the processing of a natural language. Computational linguists often work as members of interdisciplinary teams, including linguists (specifically trained in linguistics), language experts (persons with some level of ability in the languages relevant to a given project), and computer scientists. In general, computational linguistics draws upon the involvement of linguists, computer scientists, experts in artificial intelligence, mathematicians, logicians, philosophers, cognitive scientists, cognitive psychologists, psycholinguists, anthropologists and neuroscientists, among others. Computational linguistics has applied and theoretical components, where Theoretical Computational linguistics takes up issues in theoretical linguistics and cognitive science and Applied Computational linguistics focusses on the practical outcome of modelling human language use.[1] geolinguistics the study or science of linguistics in relation to geography. geolinguist, n. geolinguistic, a Language geography is the branch of human geography that studies the geographic distribution of language or its constituent elements. There are two principal fields of study within the geography of language: the "geography of languages", which deals with the distribution through history and space of languages,[1] and "linguistic geography", which deals with regional linguistic variations within languages. [2] [3][4][5][6] Various other terms and subdisciplines have been suggested, including; a division within the examination of linguistic geography separating the studies of change over time and space; [7] 'geolinguistics', a study within the geography of language concerned with 'the analysis of the distribution patterns and spatial structures of languages in contact',[8] but none have gained much currency.[6] Many studies have researched the effect of 'language contact',[9] as the languages or dialects of peoples have interacted.[6] This territorial expansion of language groups has usually resulted in the overlaying of languages upon existing speech areas, rather than the replacement of one language by another. An example could be sought in the Norman Conquest of England, where Old French became the language of the aristocracy, and Middle English remained the language of the majority of the population.[10] [edit] Linguistic geography Linguistic geography, as a field, is dominated by linguists rather than geographers.[4] Charles Withers describes the difference as resulting from a focus on "elements of language, and only then with their
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geographical or social variation, as opposed to investigation of the processes making for change in the extent of language areas."[6] To quote Trudgill, "linguistic geography has been geographical only in the sense that it has been concerned with the spatial distribution of linguistic phenomena." [5] In recent times[when?] greater emphasis has been laid upon explanation rather than description of the patterns of linguistic change.[4][6] The move has paralleled similar concerns in geography and language studies.[11] These studies have paid attention to the social use of language, and to variations in dialect within languages in regard to social class or occupation.[12] Regarding such variations, lexicographer Robert Burchfield notes that their nature "is a matter of perpetual discussion and disagreement". As an example, he notes that "most professional linguistic scholars regard it as axiomatic that all varieties of English have a sufficiently large vocabulary for the expression of all the distinctions that are important in the society using it." He contrasts this with the view of the historian Professor John Vincent, who regards such a view as "a nasty little orthodoxy among the educational and linguistic establishment. However badly you need standard English, you will have the merits of non-standard English waved at you. The more extravagantly your disadvantages will be lauded as 'entirely adequate for the needs of their speakers', to cite the author of Sociolinguistics. It may sound like a radical cry to support pidgin, patois, or dialect, but translated into social terms, it looks more like a ploy to keep Them (whoever Them may be) out of the middle-class suburbs."[13] John Vincent, The Times Burchfield concludes that "Resolution of such opposite views is not possible", though the "future of dialect studies and the study of class-marked distinctions are likely to be of considerable interest to everyone".[14] In England, linguistic geography has traditionally focussed upon rural English, rather than urban English.[15] A common production of linguistic invesigators of dialects is the shaded and dotted map showing where one linguistic feature ends and another begins or overlaps. Various compilations of these maps for England have been issued over the years, including Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary (18961905), the Survey of English Dialects (1962-8), and The Linguistic Atlas of England (1978).[16]
