A SHORT TERM ONLINE COURSE ON

LINGUISTICS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE UNDER-

RESOURCED LANGUAGES OF NORTHEAST INDIA

Topic: “Introduction to Linguistics”

Resource Speaker:
Nikay Besa
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Linguistics
Tetso College
Contents
• What is Linguistics?
• Why is linguistics scientific?
• Scope of linguistics
• Why study linguistics?
Introduction
What is Linguistics?
 Linguistics has been derived from the
Latin word lingua (tongue) and istics
(knowledge or science).
 Linguistics is the scientific study of
language, but it is not the study of one
particular language but of human
languages in general.
 It studies the language as a universal and recognizable part of human
behaviour.

It attempts to describe and analyse language.

 The field of linguistics also comprises understanding the place of

language in human life, the ways in which it is organized to fulfil the
needs it serves, and functions it performs.

So, linguistics is that science which studies the origin, organisation,

nature and development of language descriptively, historically,
comparatively and explicitly, and formulates general rules related to
language.
 Why is linguistics scientific?
 Like all other sciences, linguistics has a well defined subject
matter, viz. natural languages, living or dead; it employs
careful methods to observe, record and analyse the various
phenomena related to its subject matter and hopes to
present unprejudiced, objective and verifiable descriptions.

 It is inductive as science could be, and is based on

observation, formation of hypothesis, testing, verification,
tentativeness and predictiveness.
 Like a scientist, a linguist observes his data. Some of his
methods of observation include simple listening, phonetic
transcription, and the used of various instruments, such as
oscillograph, auto phonoscope, sonograph etc.
 The linguist also makes a prediction about unobserved
linguistic data on the basis of those observed, and build a
general theory which would explain and relate all the facts
to be found in individual languages. Predictions and
dictionaries can be made by a linguist.
 A linguist is also constantly engaged in discovering more
about languages and also establish linguistic universals.
 Scope of linguistics
Language as the expression of human thought is expressed through
language, hence all language of the universe may fall within the scope of
linguistics, and the scope of linguistics may be a bit complex.

Yet linguistics being a science, has got to be systematic discipline. So the

questions: what kind of behaviour does linguist want to investigate? Or
what is the scope of linguistics?– need to be answered. A linguist has to
study and describe language which is enormously complex
phenomenon. Therefore, it concentrates at any one time on one of the
many different, though interrelated, aspects of subject matter. The
subject matter broadly speaking is the data of language, or facts of the
language as it is spoken and written.
Why linguistics?
Linguistics does not meant learning lots of languages
But if you know linguistics, you will learn lots of languages.
 Linguistics will train you in rigorous analysis of symbolic system.
Linguistics is directly applicable in careers:
 Interpretation/ translation
 Speech pathology
 Natural language processing/ software engineering
 Language teaching
 Language researcher
 Linguistics teacher
That’s all! Thank you!