IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

1. Linguistics is the scientific study of language Elaborate on the statement with

your understanding of the study of language.
2. Discuss in detail the different branches of linguistics and their scope.
3. What is linguistics? Discuss how different levels of linguistics are linked to
each other.
4. Discuss in detail various branches of linguistics and their usefulness?
5. Is your opinion what the advantage of studying various concepts in
linguistics are?
6. How can the study of linguistics provide a better insight into language and
literary studies?
1. The etymology of 'Linguistics '?
Latin words: Lingua (Language) and Istics (Knowledge/Science).
2. What is Linguistics?
The scientific study of language, language form, meaning and in context …
i. Longman Dictionary, Fourth edition, JACK C. RICHARDS and
RICHARD SCHMIDT:
“The study of language as a system of human communication”.
ii. FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE (26 November 1857 - 22 February
1913), structuralist of Switzerland:
“Linguistics, recognize laws operating universally in language, strictly
rational manner, separating general phenomena, branch of languages”
iii. NOAM CHOMSKY (7 December 1928-alive/United States),
mentalist:
“Study of language, clarify, part substantiate certain conclusions, human
knowledge, relate directly to classical issues, philosophy of mind”
3. What is Branch?
Subdivisions of any work for better understanding, a part of something larger
4. Branches of Linguistics:
i. Macro Linguistics:
a) Historical Linguistics / Comparative Historical Linguistics / Comparative
Philology / Philology
b) Sociolinguistics

c) Psycholinguistics
d) Cognitive Linguistics / Cognitive Psychology
e) Computational linguistics
f) Applied linguistics
g) Discourse analysis

ii. Micro Linguistics:

a) Syntax
b) Semantics
c) Pragmatics
d) Phonetics
e) Phonology
f) Morphology
5. Distinction in Linguistics:
i. Synchronic and diachronic linguistics
ii. Langue and Parole
iii. Competence Vs Performance
iv. Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic
6. Conclusion:
Linguistics, scientific study of language, developed in 4th century B. C.
Branches, macro linguistics(Historical Linguistics / Comparative Historical
Linguistics / Comparative Philology / Philology, Sociolinguistics,
Psycholinguistics, Cognitive Linguistics / Cognitive Psychology,
Computational linguistics, Applied linguistics, Discourse analysis),
microlinguistics(Syntax, semantics, pragmatics, phonetics, phonology,
morphology). Distinctions in linguistics (Synchronic and diachronic, langue
and parole, competence and performance, Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic,
descriptive and transcriptive).
LINGUISTICS AND ITS BRANCHES
The term Linguistic has been derived from two Latin words: Lingua
(Language) and Istics (Knowledge/Science). Linguistics is the scientific
study of language, specifically language form, language meaning, and
language in context. As Wikipedia Encyclopedia sees it as “Linguistics is
the scientific study of language. There are broadly three aspects to this study,
which include language form, meaning and in context”. The earliest activities
in the description of language have been attributed to the 4th century BCE
Indian grammarian Pāṇini, who was an early student of linguistics and
wrote a formal description of the Sanskrit language. According to Fourth
edition of Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied
Linguistics by JACK C. RICHARDS and RICHARD
SCHMIDT, Linguistic is:
“The study of language as a system of human
communication”.
So, linguistics is the science of language. It is the subject whose
practitioners devote their energy to understand why human language is the
way. It is the study of history, acquisition, structure and use of as many
languages as possible. FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE (26 November 1857
- 22 February 1913), is a structuralist of Switzerland, says about linguistics:
 “Linguistics will have to recognize laws operating universally in language,
and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from
those restricted to one branch of languages or another”.

It is the scientific study of language, as it is based on rules. Linguistics is

the theory that human languages determine the structure of the real world as
perceived by human beings, rather than vice versa and that is structure is
different and Commensurable from one language to another. NOAM
CHOMSKY (7 December 1928-alive in the United States), a
mentalist, asserts as:
“The study of language that can clarify and in part substantiate certain
conclusions about human knowledge that relate directly to classical issues
in the philosophy of mind”.

Macro linguistics:
Macro linguistics is the major branch of linguistics which further divides
into various branches as discussed below:
a) Historical Linguistics / Comparative Historical Linguistics /
Comparative Philology / Philology:
History means inquiry and the knowledge acquired by investigation.
Incidents and situations before the current time are studied in history. It is an
umbrella term and keeps the historical record of language also. Historical
linguistics is the study of the development of language over time. How do
changes occur in language? What are the causes and effects of these changes?
According to Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and
Applied Linguistics Fourth edition, by Jack C. RICHARDS and
RICHARD SCHMIDT:
“A branch of linguistics which studies language change and language
relationships. By comparing earlier and later forms of a language and by
comparing different languages”.
It has been possible to show that certain languages are related, for example,
the Indo-European language. It has also been possible to reconstruct forms
which are believed to have occurred in a particular language before written
records were available. For example *p in an ancestor language to all the
Indo-European languages is said to be related to /p / in Sanskrit as in pita
“father” and /f/ in English as in father.
b) Sociolinguistics:
Socio means the study of the nature and development of society.
Sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to society. Language is
always meant for society. The social interaction and communication of ideas
and messages can be possible only through language. JACK C. RICHARDS
and RICHARD SCHMIDT define it as.
“The study of language in relation to social factors that is a social class,
educational level and type of education, age, sex, ethnic origin, etc.”
Linguists differ as to what they include under sociolinguistics. Many
would include the detailed study of interpersonal communication, sometimes
called micro-sociolinguistics, for example, speech acts, conversation
analysis, speech events, sequencing of utterances, and also those
investigations which relate variation in the language used by a group of
people to social factors. Such areas as the study of language choice in
bilingual or multilingual communities, language planning, language
attitudes, etc., may be included under sociolinguistics and are sometimes
referred to as macro-sociolinguistics, or they are considered as being part of
the sociology of language or the social psychology of language.
c) Psycholinguistics:
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and how it functions. It analyses
the relation of mind and language. Psycholinguistics is the study of how
mind process and produces language. It uses linguistics concepts to describe
the mental process connected with acquisition and use of language.
According to Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and
Applied Linguistics Fourth edition:
“The study of the mental processes that a person uses in producing and
understanding language, and how humans learn the language.”
For example, parsing garden path sentences:
The novice accepted the deal before he had a chance to check his finances,
which put him in a state of conflict when he realized he had a straight flush.
a) The defendant examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable
b) The evidence examined by the lawyer turned out to be unreliable
d) Cognitive Linguistics / Cognitive Psychology:
According to Merriam-Webster, the word "cognitive" is defined as "of,
relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity (such as
thinking, reasoning, or remembering)". Cognitive Linguistics (CL)
 Cognitive linguistics has proposed a model of grammatical knowledge,
construction grammar that offers an alternative to the formalist model in
which form and function (semantics and information structure) are separated
in distinct components. Construction grammar hypothesizes that knowledge
of syntax involves the knowledge of individual constructions which combine
formal properties (syntactic structures, morphological inflexions) and
functional ones (semantics and discourse function). For example, the
ditransitive construction [X Verb Z Y], as in Marilyn sent Gina a book,
specifies not only the syntactic structure of the construction but also the
semantic relationships among the participants, such as the fact that Z comes
to possess Y. Constructions are organized in a network of grammatical
knowledge in a speaker's mind. More broadly, grammatical knowledge is
organized as a system of signs or symbols, consisting of the form (the
signifier) and function (the signified). A model organizing grammatical
knowledge in terms of constructions/symbols/signs allows for a direct
statement of functional properties that are relevant to particular grammatical
constructions and other grammatical units. According to Longman
Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Fourth
edition, by Jack C. RICHARDS and RICHARD SCHMIDT:
Cognitive linguistics is an approach to linguistics which stresses the
interaction between language and cognition forcing on language as an
instrument for organizing, processing and conveying information.
e) Computational linguistics:
Computational means using a computer. It is the study of language using
techniques and concepts of computer science especially with reference to the
problems posed by the fields of machine translation and artificial intelligence.
The Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied
Linguistics Fourth edition describes it as:
“The scientific study of language from a computational perspective.”
Computational linguists are interested in providing computational models
of natural language processing (both production and comprehension) and
various kinds of linguistic phenomena. The work of computational linguists
is incorporated into such practical applications as speech recognition systems,
speech synthesis, automated voice response systems, web search engines, text
editors, and language instruction materials.
f) Applied linguistics:
 Applied means to use in a practical way. The universal rules of linguistics
when applied of a specific language. JACK C. RICHARDS and RICHARD
SCHMIDT in Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and
Applied Linguistics Fourth edition define applied linguistics as:
“The study of language and linguistics in relation to practical problems,
such as lexicography, translation, speech pathology, etc.”
For example, language teaching, translation, and speech therapy etc.
g) Discourse analysis:
Discourse analysis is sometimes defined as the analysis of language
'beyond the sentence'. This contrasts with types of analysis more typical of
modern linguistics, which are chiefly concerned with the study of grammar:
the study of smaller bits of language, such as sounds (phonetics and
phonology), parts of words (morphology), meaning (semantics), and the
order of words in sentences (syntax). Discourse analysts study larger chunks
of language as they flow together. RICHARDS says:
“The study of how sentences in spoken and written language form larger
meaningful units such as paragraphs, conversations, interviews, etc.”
Some discourse analysts consider the larger discourse context in order to
understand how it affects the meaning of the sentence. For example,
CHARLES FILLMORE points out that two sentences taken together as a
single discourse can have meanings different from each one taken separately.
To illustrate, he asks one to imagine two independent signs at a swimming
pool: "Please use the toilet, not the pool," says one. The other announces,
"Pool for members only." If you regard each sign independently, they seem
quite reasonable. But taking them together as a single discourse makes you
go back and revise your interpretation of the first sentence after one has read
the second.
Macro branches:
Macro branches are the branches related to internal structure of language.
They belong to various parts of language as syntax, semantics, pragmatics,
phonology and morphology.
a) Syntax:
Syntax means structure. It deals the combination of units as words and
meaningful elements are constructed. It involves the description of rules
about positioning the elements in a sentence. However, Syntax is a major
component of the grammar of a language (together with the lexicon,
 phonology, and semantics). Longman Dictionary, Fourth edition, JACK C.
RICHARDS and RICHARD SCHMIDT writes about it in these words:
“Syntax concerns the ways in which words combine to form sentences and
the rules which govern the formation of sentences, making some sentences
possible and others not possible within a particular language.”

b) Semantics:
Semantics deals with the level of meaning in language or investigates the
meaning of language. It is the study of all aspects of meaning in language.
JACK C. RICHARDS and RICHARD SCHMIDT say:
“Semantics is the study of meaning. There are many different approaches
to the way in which meaning in language is studied.”
For example, "destination" and "last stop" technically mean the same
thing, but students of semantics analyze their subtle shades of meaning.
c) Pragmatics:
The term pragmatics was coined in the 1930s by the philosopher C.W.
Morris. Pragmatics was developed as a subfield of linguistics in the 1970s.
Pragmatics is context dependent that deals with contextual aspects of
meaning in particular situation in which they are used. Different
arrangements of one sentence differ in meaning according to the context.
Longman Dictionary, Fourth edition, JACK C. RICHARDS and
RICHARD SCHMIDT:
“The study of the use of language in communication, particularly the
relationships between sentences and the contexts and situations in which
they are used.”
Look at the following example:
[KATE is about to go out of her house]
KATE: Now I’ve lost my keys. No, I haven’t. Here they are. I mustn’t
forget my keys.
From this we understand that: It is important that Kate takes her keys and she
is afraid she might lose them or forget them because on a previous occasion
she has forgotten them. These two ideas do not come from the individual
words Kate has spoken. They come from the particular combination of these
words with our knowledge of the situation where they are used. Some words
show many different pragmatic effects. Forget is one of these, and here we
show several contrasting uses of forgetting. Language users (either speakers
 or writers) continually make choices of words and phrases and these choices
affect how they are understood.

d) Phonetics:
The physical properties of all human sound. It studies the characteristics of
human sound production especially those sounds used in speech and provides
methods for their description, classification and transcription. According
to Fourth edition of Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and
Applied Linguistics by JACK C. RICHARDS and RICHARD
SCHMIDT, it is:
“The study of speech sounds. There are three main areas of phonetics:
articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics and auditory phonetics”
For example, a listener may perceive:
a) Differences in aspiration e.g. between the aspirated /p/ of [phit] pit and the
unaspirated /p/ of [tip] tip.
b) Other differences in sound quality, e.g. between the “clear” /i/ of [lait] light
and the “dark” /i/ of [hi\] hill.
e) Phonology:
The study of specific sounds that make up words of speaking and
listening. The study of how languages organize the units of speech into
systems According to Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and
Applied Linguistics by JACK C. RICHARDS and RICHARD
SCHMIDT:
“The study of word-to-word relations in sentences; that is, how sound
patterns are affected by the combination of words.”
For example, /gIv/ give and /hIm/ him may combine to /gIvIm/ give him.
f) Morphology:
The study of word formation and inflexion. It is a branch of grammar
which studies the structure or forms of words. According to JACK C.
RICHARDS and RICHARD SCHMIDT, who asserts:
“The study of morphemes and their different forms (allomorphs), and the
way they combine in word formation.”
For example, the English word unfriendly is formed from a friend, the
adjective-forming suffix -ly and the negative prefix un-.
Forensic linguistics, legal linguistics, or language and the law, is the application of linguistic
knowledge, methods and insights to the forensic context of law, language, crime investigation,
trial, and judicial procedure. It is a branch of applied linguistics.

There are principally three areas of application for linguists working in forensic contexts:[1]

 understanding language of the written law,

 understanding language use in forensic and judicial processes, and
 the provision of linguistic evidence.

Linguists investigate how people acquire knowledge about language, how this knowledge
interacts with other thought processes, how it varies between speakers and geographic regions,
and how to model this knowledge computationally. They study how to represent the structure of
various aspects of language (such as sounds or meaning), how to theoretically explain different
linguistic patterns, and how different components of language interact with each other. Many
linguists employ statistical analysis, mathematics, and logical formalism to account for the
patterns they observe.