Linguistics is a scientific study that analyzes the structure and meaning, history and improvement, and the various use of language with many different forms according to the time. For example, in this modern era.
There are also few subtopics for linguistics science, such as the one topic that focused on the structure and meaning of a language. Another subtopic will be centered on the historical value and the effects of language improvement from time to time. And there are still many more subtopics for linguistics science, so let’s move to another section to know more about each of them.
1. General Linguistics
In general linguistics, we will learn about phonetics, phonology, morphology, etc. For now, I will give the meaning for each of them.
- Phonetics: It is a branch of linguistics study that learns about how our articulation works when we spell a word.
- Phonology : Phonology studies the application of sound structure theories in various languages.
- Morphology: Morphology learns about the combined equivalent of words, also the beginning part of it, prefixes, and suffixes.
- Syntax: The syntax is a part of linguistics science that focused on the structure of a sentence, clauses, particles, and sentence completeness.
- Semantics: This subtopic learns the meaning of words and how the meaning changes according to the context of the sentence.
- Pragmatics: Pragmatics studies the relation between the meaning of an expression and the context outside of the actual meaning of the expression.
2. Interfaces in Linguistics
- Neurolinguistics: It is the study of how an expression of a language is being represented in our brain. Like how we memorized the meaning of words, how we spell, understand, read, and when we use them to communicate with others.
- Psycholinguistics: It is the branch of linguistics science that focused on mind language and expression. Especially about how a word is represented and processed in our brain. This topic is closely related to cognitive linguistics science.
- Sociolinguistics: Sociolinguistics studies the effects from every aspect of society, including the cultural norms, context, the usage of vocabularies, expectations, and community involvement to how the language is expressed. This shows us that times and places give an impact on the language, especially its usage and pronunciation.
- Computational linguistics: It is a study about the uses of the computer as models of language producer. The result of the models of language produced by the computer can be utilized to describe the subtle pattern in a language structure, and even for us to improve the artificial intelligence that uses the computer language for us to interact with the technology devices. Like how when we use the search engine, voice recognition, text-to-speech, and many more.
3. Cognitive Linguistics
Cognitive is one of the linguistics branches that studies how language reflects our way of mind. Such as analyzing if there’s any impact by the numbers of different colored words in various languages to how humans understand and perceive the words.
- Hypothesis
Linguists explain that aspects of language influence one another. Such s the ability to classify objects or understanding social interactions. With that being said, it is concluded that language also strengthens cognitive functions and other aspects that underlie it. Because of that, sometimes we know people with different levels of cognitive ability and language capability.
- Methodologies
The methods that we can use to learn about cognitive linguistics are data from the recording documentation, transcripts from spoken language, experiments, and demographic reports of language models found in these elements. The experts believe that a language expression cannot be separated from its context, because of the difference of vocabularies, the knowledge that people know can affect and limit their communication.
- Subtopics of subject
Study about cognitive linguistics science can be divided into a few subtopics based on the subject learned from each topic, that is historical value of linguistics, language acquisition, semantics, also the context and it’s meaning. Now, let’s look up to their definition:
- History of language and linguistics
The history of language and linguistics focuses on discussions related to the origin and development of language. As well as the influence of language on various aspects.
For example, old English comes from West Germanic with the Anglo dialect, then transform to Middle English which more tends to the French language and the last is modern English which is currently the common use. Likewise with the development of linguistics, starting with traditional linguistics, then it’s evolving into structural linguistics, and finally, it becomes transformational linguistics that also known as modern linguistics.
- Languange acquisition
Language acquisition is the ability of humans to understand and comprehend languages, perceiving the meaning of an expression, and understanding a sente nce according to its context, also using words and language to produce an expression to communicate with others.
4. Comparative Linguistics
Comparative linguistics is associated with the history of language that also learns about the comparison between languages to find any relation of them based on their historical value.
5. Applied Linguistics
Applied linguistics is a subject that discusses the application or the use of language and linguistics in everyday cases. An example is to support communication to be effective, the way of delivery in teaching and learning activity so it comes out attractive so that it can persuade the students to learn more and being excited about the lesson. Also, applied linguistics can be used as a medium for testing language understanding for students.