Linguistics

Linguistics is the study of languages. How people talk about language itself changing and evolving. It studies how language effects behavior and how the brain interacts with language or rather how languages affect the brain which intersects with physical anthropology.

That summarizes linguistics neatly; linguistics as the scientific study and analysis of language. Linguistics contains quite a few sub-fields within it as well as different approaches, linguistics draws on a variety of other fields and focuses upon the effects of language within those fields, how language influences and is influenced by them.

Linguistics primarily focuses on describing, explaining and categorizing the nature of human language itself. This of course involves a great deal. What is universal to language? How do all languages differ? In what ways can language differ? How do human beings come to know languages? Linguists through study have arrived at a point where they believe that language is an innate and biological potential of modern humans.

Linguists don't all agree on this innate ability however they do all agree that there is no innate genetic difference between languages and the ability to absorb them, that the language learned by an individual is based purely upon culture.

Linguistics is an incredibly large field with many subsections and categories in which language falls. Linguistics focuses very prevalently on the language patterns, meaning and form. Listed here are a few of the fields relating purely to the study of pure speech and the structure of language: Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis.

Going along with the domains of study devoted almost entirely to structure of language are the other fields of linguistics distinguished by those non-linguistic factors that they take into account. Some of these are Applied Linguistics which is the study of language as applied to everyday life like politics, planning and education. Developmental linguistics is the study of how language develops in individuals. Evolutionary linguistics is the study of the origin and development of language by humanity.

Neurolingustics is the study of the structure of the human brain that underlies language, Psycholinguistics is the study of the cognitive process and the language and Sociolinguistics which is the study of the variation in language and its relationship with other social factors. This isn't a comprehensive list of the sub-fields of linguistics, not by a long shot but it does provide a snap-shot into the field.