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BRANCHES OF LINGUISTICS

By

Ashish Prasad & Apurv Verma

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WHAT IS LINGUISTICS?

Scientific study of human language.

Aims of linguistic theory: What is knowledge of language?

(Competence) How is knowledge of language acquired?

(Acquisition) How is knowledge of language put to use?

(Performance/language processing)

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LANGUAGE

“Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.”--Edward Sapir (1884-1939):Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech (1921)

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“From now on I will consider language to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.”

--Noam Chomsky (1928- ): Syntactic Structures (1957)

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IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE

The most important tool ever invented. Distinguishes us from other creatures. Provides a medium to think effectively,

communicate interpersonally and collaborate with other people in work. 

Impossible to imagine a world without language.

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LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD

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MAIN BRANCHES OF LINGUISTICS

Phonetics Phonology Morphology Syntax Semantics Pragmatics

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PHONETICS

Phonetics studies speech sounds, including Production of speech, that is how speech sounds

are actually made : Articulatory Phonetics Transmission and receipt of speech : Acoustic

Phonetics and Perception of the transmitted sound by human

brain : Auditory Phonetics.

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PHONOLOGY

Studies the sound system of languages. Distinctive sounds within a language, Nature of sound systems across the languages.

Phoneme (from the Greek: φώνημα, phōnēma, "a sound uttered") is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances.

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MORPHOLOGY

Studies the formation of words from smaller units called morphemes.

Morpheme: minimal meaningful language unit.

Phoneme(s): smallest linguistically distinctive units of sound) in spoken language.

Grapheme(s): written symbol to represent speech.

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SYNTAX

Rules that govern the formation of sentences from words.

Syntactic phrases include: Noun Phrase : a tall man, the bus Verb Phrase : roam around, hit the ball Prepositional Phrase : in the class, at the club Adjective Phrase : Very good, nice girl

The Grammatical Rules: SOV: eg. Hindi SVO: eg . English

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GRAMMAR

The syntax of a language deals with the grammatical structure of a language.

Grammar is the structural foundation of our ability to express ourselves. Descriptive grammar : structure actually used

by speakers and writers. Prescriptive grammar : structure that should

be used.

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HIERARCHY OF LANGUAGE: STRATIFICATION

PhonemesSyllablesMorphemes WordsPhrasesClausesSentences/utterances Texts/discourses

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SEMANTICS

Study of language meaning.

Concerned with not only the meaning of words, but also that of morphemes and of sentences.

Lexical semantics study how and what the words of a language denote.

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SEMANTIC RELATIONS

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EXAMPLES

Pretty and attractive are synonyms. Good and bad are antonyms. Animal is a hypernym of mammal which is a

hypernym of dog. Dog is a hyponym of mammal which is a

hyponym of animal. Bark is a meronym of tree which is a

meronym of forest. Forest is a holonym of tree which is a

holonym of bark. 

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PRAGMATICS

Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context.

How language is used to communicate rather than how it is internally structured.

Govern a number of conversational interactions, such as sequential organization, repair of errors, role and speech acts.

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REFERENCES

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics

en.citizendium.org/wiki/Linguistics

Lecture Slides

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THANK YOU