What linguistics is not?
Linguistics
is not about learning as many languages as you can; there are many
linguists who can only speak one or two languages. There isn't
a requirement to learn multiple languages. However, it is true that
many (though not all) of us linguists become interested in linguistics because
we like learning languages and decide to take an introduction to linguistics
course to find out what it's about.
Linguistics is
also not about prescribing what grammar is “correct”.
Rather, we describe language and its flexibility. If someone is a
native speaker of a language, their grammar cannot be “wrong”. So Southern
English, standard American English, African American Vernacular English, London
English, Cockney English, etc. are all legitimate grammars with their own
regular rules.
So what is linguistics?
To put it simply,
linguistics is the scientific study of language. Linguistics aims to
understand how the language faculty of the mind works and to describe how
language itself works. Linguists observe patterns within a language and
across languages to try to understand what principles drive our brains’
comprehension and production of language.
There's a quote by Lynne Murphy that "asking a linguist how many languages s/he
speaks is like asking a doctor how many diseases s/he has had". As
linguists, languages (and language) are our objects of study. We learn to look
at languages as data and recognize their patterns, just as doctors learn to
recognize signs and symptoms of diseases. Whether they have had the disease
before or not is irrelevant. Many people come to linguistics from other areas:
math, computer science, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and cognitive
science, just to name a few popular related fields.
Linguistics spans a large number of subfields/branches, each dealing with a different
part of the language faculty.
Phonetics - the study of the
acoustics and sounds of languages
A phonetician
might, for example, look at how stress manifests in a language.
In English, the
stressed word in a normal sentence is louder and higher pitched: “ANna likes
bananas.” If we ask a question though, it’s pronounced with a lower pitch:
“ANna likes bananas?”
Phonology
- the study of sound systems and how they pattern
For example, in
English, there are many examples of t's in the middle of words that
sound quite different from t's at the beginning or end of words. Listen to
the t's in "toted" and you’ll hear that they don’t sound the
same. The first t is pronounced with a puff of air (put your hand in
front of your mouth to check this) but the second is not and it sounds like
the d in “coded.” This sound is called a tap because your
tongue taps the roof of your mouth briefly and it is very similar to the
tapped r sound in languages like Spanish or Japanese (this leads to
misperceptions of the English middle t as an r for speakers
of these languages).
Syntax
- the study of sentence structure
English and many
western European languages have a phenomenon called “wh-movement.” wh-words are
the question words who, which, what, where, when, why, and how. Think about the
sentence “I eat an apple” as a possible response to the question “What do
you eat?” The word what corresponds to apple, but it shows up at
the beginning of the sentence.
In many languages,
though, the wh-word corresponds to the same position as the word it refers to.
For example, in Chinese you would say “I eat apple” in response to “You
eat what?” We say then that in languages like
English, wh-movement has occurred and the structure is: “What do you
eat what?” A lot of other properties of a language are predicted by
whether it has wh-movement or not, but we’ll have to leave those to another
time!
Semantics
- the study of meaning and formalizing it into a logical form
English and many
western European languages have a phenomenon called “wh-movement.” wh-words are
the question words who, which, what, where, when, why, and how. Think about the
sentence “I eat an apple” as a possible response to the question
“What do you eat?” The word what corresponds to apple, but
it shows up at the beginning of the sentence. In many languages,
though, the wh-word corresponds to the same position (called in-situ) as
the word it refers to. For example, in Chinese you would say “I eat apple”
in response to “You eat what?” We say then that in languages like
English, wh-movement has occurred and the structure is:
In English, the wh-word
moves to the front of the sentence (why “do” appears in questions is another
issue that I don’t have room to tackle here). A lot of other properties of a
language are predicted by whether it has wh-movement or not, but we’ll have to
leave those to another time
Psycholinguistics -
the study of how language manifests in the brain
Psycholinguists carry
out experiments to observe the reaction of the brain’s different areas to
different stimuli, and they’ll try to relate the findings to the more abstract
linguistic theories.
An example is tracking
people’s eye movements when they read the sentence “The old man the boat.” This
is known as a garden path sentence, because readers are led down a “false
path.” The reader does a double take once s/he reaches “the”, having expected a
verb to appear. The second time around, the reader realizes that “man” is a
verb and then parses the sentence correctly. These garden path
sentences provide insight into how sentence parsing occurs in the brain.
Sociolinguistics
- the study of the intersection of language with society
Sociolinguists might
look at attitudes toward different linguistic features and its relation to
class, race, sex, etc. For example, one of the fathers of sociolinguistics,
William Labov, carried out an experiment in New York City in which he visited
three department stores--a low end one (S. Klein), a mid-end one (Macy’s), and
a high-end one (Saks Fifth Avenue)--and inquired where a department was in
order to prompt the answer “fourth floor.”
The higher end the
store, the more likely the “r” was pronounced, and when asked to repeat, it was
only Saks Fifth Avenue and Macy’s where the “r” became much more likely to be
pronounced the second time around. The study also had implications for the
ability in different communities to code switch to a prestige dialect.
Computational
linguistics - the study of applying computer science to linguistics
Computational linguists
might use programming to model linguistic structure or change or for practical
applications, such as Natural Language Processing, which has implications both
for figuring out and modeling how language acquisition works as well as for
translation software.
Historical
linguistics - the study of how languages change across time
Historical linguists
may work in language specific areas, carrying out what is
called reconstruction. Just as evolutionary biologists compare features of
related organisms to reconstruct their common ancestor, historical linguists do
the same with related languages, under the important fact that
languages change regularly.
As a simple
example, f’s at the beginning of English words correspond to p’s at
the beginning of Latin words if neither is borrowed from another language
(father : pater, fish : pisces, pellis
: felt, pes : foot). Using reconstructions, historical linguists will
try to trace migration patterns and make inferences about the prehistoric culture,
triangulating with results by geneticists, anthropologists, and archaeologists.
Historical linguists might also look at what patterns exist in language change
and seek to explain why these patterns exist.
Applied
linguistics - the study of applying linguistics to real-life situations
An applied linguistic
will likely work in fields such as such as language education, translation, or
language policy. For example, an applied linguist may also carry out research
in first and second language acquisition in order to figure out effective and
efficient ways to teach language in school settings.
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