Linguistics

Linguistics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language, encompassing a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure (grammar) and the study of meaning (semantics). Grammar encompasses morphology (the formation and composition of words), syntax (the rules that determine how words combine into phrases and sentences) and phonology (the study of sound systems and abstract sound units). Phonetics is a related branch of linguistics concerned with the actual properties of speech sounds (phones), non-speech sounds, and how they are produced and perceived.

Over the twentieth century, following the work of Noam Chomsky,^[1] linguistics came to be dominated by the Generativist school, which is chiefly concerned with explaining how human beings acquire language and the biological constraints on this acquisition. Generative theory is modularist in character. While this remains the dominant paradigm,^[2] Chomsky's writings have also gathered much criticism, and other linguistic theories have increasingly gained popularity; cognitive linguistics is a prominent example. There are many sub-fields in linguistics, which may or may not be dominated by a particular theoretical approach: evolutionary linguistics attempts to account for the origins of language; historical linguistics explores language change and sociolinguistics looks at the relation between linguistic variation and social structures.

A variety of intellectual disciplines are relevant to the study of language. Linguistics — like other sciences — is highly interdisciplinary and draws on work from such fields as psychology, speech-language pathology, informatics, computer science, philosophy, biology, human anatomy, neuroscience, sociology, anthropology, and acoustics."

http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/