Basic Issues and

Concepts of
Linguistics
 What is Linguistics?

• Linguistics is a scientific study of language or of

particular languages.

• Linguists are scholars who systematically study

language.
 Branches of Linguistics

A. Micro Linguistics
• Phonetics is the study of speech sounds.
• Phonology is the study of function and patterning of
sounds.
• Morphology is the study of structure and formation of
words.
• Syntax is the study of sentence formation.
• Semantics is the study of meaning.
B. Macro Linguistics
• Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context.
• Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between
language and society.
• Psycholinguistics is the study of the relationship between
language and psychology.
• Anthropological linguistics is the study of the relationship
between language and anthropology.
• Computational linguistics is the study of the relationship
between language and computer.

• Applied linguistics is the branch o f linguistics that seeks

to solve language-related problems in the real world.
• Corpus linguistics is the study of natural language based on
the machine-readable databases.
 Central Concept of Linguistics
• The founder of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure
(1857 – 1913).
• Cours de linguistique générale (Course in General Linguistics)
(1916).
• A fundamental change of direction of linguistic study in the
early 20th century.
 Central Dichotomies
• Synchronic linguistics vs. Diachronic linguistics
Synchronic linguistics is the study of languages at a certain point in
time.
Diachronic linguistics is the study of language change over time.

• Descriptivism vs. Presciptivism

Descriptive linguistics aims to describe the facts of linguistic usage as
they are in practice.
Prescriptive linguistics attempts to prescribe rules of “correctness”, i.e.
to lay down normative rules as to how language should be used.

• Langue vs. Parole

Langue refers to the language system.
Parole refers to the concrete language use by the individual.
• Signifiant vs. Signifié
Signifiant (signifier) refers to a sound or usually a sound
sequence (or sound pattern) at the level of expression.
Signifié (signified) is the level of concept of meaning.
The relationship between the sound pattern and the concept is
said to be arbitrary. The connection between the sound
pattern and the concept of a sign is by conven­tion only.
• Syntagmatic relation vs. Paradigmatic relation
Syntagmatic relations determine combination of units to create
meaning. (Chain)
Paradigmatic relations determine (optimally) correct one out
of possible alternatives. (Choice)
• Competence vs. Performance
Linguistic competence refers to a language user’s underlying
knowledge about the system of rules.
Linguistic performance refers to the actual use of langauge
in concrete situations.
(Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Noam Chomsky, 1965).
 Major Linguistics School of Thought
• Structuralism (1916)
 Structural linguistics aims at the description and analysis
of all ele­ments of the language system (structure) and the
relationships that exist between them.
 These elements and their interrelationships are investigated
at all structural levels of linguistics, such as sounds, words
and sentences.
 Ferdinand de Saussure
• Functionalism (Prague School of Functionalism) (1930)
 Functionalism partly continues structuralist ideas but focuses
on the function or functions of lan­guage and individual
linguistic features.
 Karl Bührel

• Generative Linguistics or Formalism (1950)

 The term generative was intro­duced by Noam Chomsky in
his influential book Syntactic Structures in 1957.
 Extremely simplified, the generative approach reflects the
fact that all speakers of a language can pro­duce, or generate,
a theoretically unlimited number of grammati­cal sentences
from a limited number of means, i.e. words and the rules for
their combination.