INTRO TO LINGUISTGICS

LINGUISTICS

Linguistic derived from the Latin "lingua" meaning language, the French language "langage-langue", Italian "lingua", Spanish "lengua" and English "language". While the suffix "ics" in linguistics serves to indicate the name of a science.

Many linguistic experts define, among others: 

• Jurji Zaidan, defines linguistics as a science that investigates the language of the written and non-written. 
• Saiful Mu'minin, Imam, define Linguistics as a science that discusses the language of the various sides. 
• King T. Nasr (1984),Linguistics deals with human language as universal and recognizable part of human behavior and human capabilities.
• BLOOMFIELD (1933: 20-34), Linguistics is a science (science), as well as physics and chemistry is a science. 
•  MATTHEWS, Linguistics is defined as the science of language or the scientific study of language 

Linguistics is the science of language, including the sounds or signs, words, and grammar rules. Words in languages are finite, but sentences are not. It is this creative aspect of human language that sets it apart from animal languages, which are essentially responses to stimuli. 

The rules of a language, also called grammar, are learned as one acquires a language. These rules include phonology, the sound system, morphology, the structure of words, syntax, the combination of words into sentences, semantics, the ways in which sounds and meanings are related, and the lexicon, or mental dictionary of words. When you know a language, you know words in that language, i.e. sound units or signs that are related to specific meanings. However, the sounds or signs and meanings of words are arbitrary. For the most part, there is no relationship between the way a word is pronounced (or signed) and its meaning.

What is Phonology?

Whereas phonetics is the study of sounds and is concerned with the production, audition and perception of of speech sounds (called phones), phonology describes the way sounds function within a given language and operates at the level of sound systems and abstract sound units. Knowing the sounds of a language is only a small part of phonology. This importance is shown by the fact that you can change one word into another by simply changing one sound. Consider the differences between the words time and dime. The words are identical except for the first sound. [t] and [d] can therefore distinguish words, and are called contrasting sounds. They are distinctive sounds in English, and all distinctive sounds are classified as phonemes.

What is Morphology?

Morphology is the study of words. Morphemes are the minimal units of words that have a meaning and cannot be subdivided further. There are two main types: free and bound. Free morphemes can occur alone and bound morphemes must occur with another morpheme. An example of a free morpheme is “bad”, and an example of a bound morpheme is “ly.” It is bound because although it has meaning, it cannot stand alone. It must be attached to another morpheme to produce a word.

What is Syntax?

Syntax refers to word order and depends on lexical categories (parts of speech.) You probably learned that there are eight main parts of speech in grammar school. Linguistics takes a different approach to these categories and separates words into morphological and syntactic groups. Linguistics analyzes words according to their affixes and the words that follow or precede them. Hopefully, the following definitions of the parts of speech will make more sense and be more useful than the old definitions of grammar school books.

What is Semantics?

 semantics is concerned with the meanings of words and the meaning of relationships among words, while phrasal semantics is concerned with the meaning of syntactic units larger than the word. Semantic properties are the components of meanings of words. For example, the semantic property “human” can be found in many words such as parent, doctor, baby, professor, widow, and aunt. Other semantic properties include animate objects, male, female, countable items and non-countable items.

What is Applied Linguistics?

Applied Linguistics is concerned with practical issues involving language in the life of the community. The most important of these is the learning of second or foreign languages. Others include language policy, multilingualism, language education, the preservation and revival of endangered languages, and the assessment and treatment of language difficulties.

Other areas of interest include professional communication, for example, between doctors and their patients, between lawyers and their clients and in courtrooms, as well as other areas of institutional and cross-cultural communication ranging from the boardroom to the routines on an answer phone.

Linguistics and Applied Linguistics is a challenging and stimulating discipline, offering many opportunities for original work.

Applied Linguistics:

• Examines the structure of language and its role in communication
• Explores how children acquire language
• Studies how the skills of second-language speakers develop
• Investigates how the social or cultural environment interacts with language