Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language — its structure, meaning, use, acquisition, variation, and change — and of the human capacity for language.
Scope
The field covers the core levels of linguistic structure (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics) and interfaces with society (sociolinguistics), mind (psycholinguistics), history (historical linguistics), computation (computational linguistics), and application (applied linguistics).
Sub-topics
Core questions
- What is the structure of human language?
- What do all languages have in common, and how do they differ?
- How do children acquire language?
- How does language vary and change over time and across society?
- How is linguistic knowledge represented and processed in the mind?
Key concepts
- The linguistic sign
- Langue and parole
- Phoneme and morpheme
- Competence and performance
- Universal grammar
- Linguistic variation
- Language change
Key theories
- Structuralism
- Saussure distinguished langue from parole and the signifier from the signified, founding the structural study of language as a system of differences.
- American descriptivism
- Sapir and Bloomfield built rigorous methods for describing the world's languages, with Bloomfield giving the field a behaviourist, distributional rigor.
- Generative grammar
- Chomsky reframed linguistics around the speaker's tacit knowledge (competence) and a generative, rule-governed syntax, positing an innate universal grammar.
- Sociolinguistics and functionalism
- Labov made the systematic study of linguistic variation and change empirical, while Halliday's systemic-functional grammar analysed language as a resource for meaning in social context.
History
Comparative-historical philology dominated the nineteenth century. Saussure's posthumous Cours (1916) founded structuralism, and American descriptivism (Sapir, Bloomfield) systematized fieldwork. Chomsky's generative revolution (1957 onward) reoriented the field toward mind and syntax, while sociolinguistics (Labov), functionalism (Halliday), and, more recently, usage-based, cognitive, and computational approaches diversified it.
Debates
- Innateness versus usage-based learning
- Generativists posit an innate universal grammar; usage-based and functional linguists argue language is learned from input through general cognitive mechanisms.
- Formal versus functional explanation
- Approaches differ on whether linguistic structure is best explained by autonomous formal principles or by communicative function and use.
Key figures
- Ferdinand de Saussure
- Edward Sapir
- Leonard Bloomfield
- Noam Chomsky
- William Labov
- M. A. K. Halliday
Related topics
Seminal works
- saussure-1916
- sapir-1921
- bloomfield-1933
- chomsky-1957
- labov-1972
Frequently asked questions
- Does studying linguistics mean learning many languages?
- No; linguistics studies the structure and principles of language itself. Linguists may know several languages, but the goal is understanding how language works, not fluency.
- What is the difference between linguistics and grammar?
- Grammar (in the prescriptive sense) sets rules for 'correct' usage; linguistics describes and explains how language actually works, without prescribing.