Information about Theoretical Linguistics
For the journal, see .
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The relationship between the major subfields of theoretical linguistics
Theoretical linguistics is the branch of linguistics that is most concerned with developing models of linguistic knowledge. Part of this endeavor involves the search for and explanation of linguistic universals, that is, properties all languages have in common. The fields that are generally considered the core of theoretical linguistics are syntax, phonology, morphology, and semantics. Although phonetics often informs phonology, it is often excluded from the purview of theoretical linguistics, along with psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics.
Major fields
- Further information: grammar, formal grammar, grammar framework
Phonetics
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds with concentration on three main points :- Articulation : the production of speech sounds in human speech organs.
- Perception : the way human ears respond to speech signals, how the human brain analyses them.
- Acoustic features : physical characteristics of speech sounds such as color, loudness, amplitude, frequency etc.
Articulatory phonetics
The field of articulatory phonetics is a subfield of phonetics. In studying articulation, phoneticians attempt to document how humans produce speech sounds (vowels and consonants). That is, articulatory phoneticians are interested in how the different structures of the vocal tract, called the articulators (tongue, lips, jaw, palate, teeth etc.), interact to create the specific sounds.Auditory phonetics
Auditory phonetics is a branch of phonetics concerned with the hearing, acquisition and comprehension of phonetic sounds of words of a language. As articulatory phonetics explores the methods of sound production, auditory phonetics explores the methods of reception--the ear to the brain, and those processes.Acoustic phonetics
Acoustic phonetics is a subfield of phonetics which deals with acoustic aspects of speech sounds. Acoustic phonetics investigates properties like the mean squared amplitude of a waveform, its duration, its fundamental frequency, or other properties of its frequency spectrum, and the relationship of these properties to other branches of phonetics (e.g. articulatory or auditory phonetics), and to abstract linguistic concepts like phones, phrases, or utterances.Phonology
Phonology is the study of language sounds (Ottenheimer, 34). Phonology is divided into two separate studies; Phonetics and Phonemics. Phonetics is what depicts the sounds we hear. It calls attention to the smallest details in language sounds. There are three kinds of phonetics; Acoustic phonetics, auditory phonetics, and articulatory phonetics. Acoustic phonetics deals with the physical properties of sound. What sounds exactly are coming from the person speaking. Auditory phonetics deals with how the sounds are percieved. Exactly what the person hearing the sounds is percieving. Finally, articulatory phoentics studies how the speech sounds are produced. This is what describes the actual sounds in detail. It is also known as descriptive phonetics(Ottenheimer, 36-37). Phonemics studies how the sounds are used. It analyzes the way sounds are arranged in languages and helps you to hear what sounds are important in a language (Ottenheimer, 46-47). It helps one to understand the culture behind the language. The unit of analysis for phonemics is called phonemes. "A phoneme is a sound that functions to distinguish one word from another in a language," (Ottenheimer, 47). For example, how we distinguish the english word tie from the word die. The sounds that differintiates two words are [t], and [d] (Ottenheimer, 47).
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References
'''Ottenheimer, H.J. (2006). The Anthropology of Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology.Canada: Thomas Wadsworth.
Morphology
Morphology is the study of word structure. For example, in the sentences The dog runs and The dogs run, the word forms runs and dogs have an affix -s added, distinguishing them from the bare forms dog and run. Adding this suffix to a nominal stem gives plural forms, adding it to verbal stems restricts the subject to third person singular. Some morphological theories operate with two distinct suffixes -s, called allomorphs of the morphemes Plural and Third person singular, respectively. Languages differ with respect to their morphological structure. Along one axis, we may distinguish analytic languages, with few or no affixes or other morphological processes from synthetic languages with many affixes. Along another axis, we may distinguish agglutinative languages, where affixes express one grammatical property each, and are added neatly one after another, from fusional languages, with non-concatenative morphological processes (infixation, umlaut, ablaut, etc.) and/or with less clear-cut affix boundaries.Syntax
Syntax is the study of language structure and word order. It is concerned with the relationship between units at the level of words or morphology. Syntax seeks to delineate exactly all and only those sentences which make up a given language, using native speaker intuition. Syntax seeks to describe formally exactly how structural relations between elements (lexical items/words and operators) in a sentence contribute to its interpretation. Syntax uses principles of formal logic and Set Theory to formalize and represent accurately the hierarchical relationship between elements in a sentence. Abstract syntax trees are often used to illustrate the hierarchical structures that are posited. Thus, in active declarative sentences in English the subject is followed by the main verb which in turn is followed by the object (SVO). This order of elements is crucial to its correct interpretation and it is exactly this which syntacticians try to capture. They argue that there must be such a formal computational component contained within the language faculty of normal speakers of a language and seek to describe it.Semantics
Semantics is the study of intensive meaning in words and sentences.Semantics can be expressed through diction (word choice) and inflexion. Inflexion may be conveyed through an author's tone in writing and a speaker's tone of voice, changing pitch and stress of words to influence meaning.
See also
For the journal, see .
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, which can be theoretical or applied. Someone who engages in this study is called a linguist...... Click the link for more information.
A linguistic universal is a statement that is true for all natural languages. For example, All languages have nouns and verbs, or All spoken languages have consonants and vowels.
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See Language (journal) for the linguistics journal.
A language is a system of symbols and the rules used to manipulate them. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon.
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In computer science, SYNTAX is a system used to generate lexical and syntactic analyzers (parsers) (both deterministic and non-deterministic) for all kind of context-free grammars
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For the journal, see .
Phonology (Greek φωνή (phōnē), voice, sound + λόγος (lógos), word, speech, subject of discussion), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a..... Click the link for more information.
For other uses, see Morphology.
Morphology is the field within linguistics that studies the internal structure of words. (Words as units in the lexicon are the subject matter of lexicology...... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning 'sound, voice') is the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the actual properties of speech sounds (phones), and their production, audition and perception, while phonology, which
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language.
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Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context on the way language is used. Sociolinguistics overlaps to a considerable degree with pragmatics.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
For the journal, see .
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, which can be theoretical or applied. Someone who engages in this study is called a linguist...... Click the link for more information.
Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning 'sound, voice') is the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the actual properties of speech sounds (phones), and their production, audition and perception, while phonology, which
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
For the journal, see .
Phonology (Greek φωνή (phōnē), voice, sound + λόγος (lógos), word, speech, subject of discussion), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a..... Click the link for more information.
For other uses, see Morphology.
Morphology is the field within linguistics that studies the internal structure of words. (Words as units in the lexicon are the subject matter of lexicology...... Click the link for more information.
In computer science, SYNTAX is a system used to generate lexical and syntactic analyzers (parsers) (both deterministic and non-deterministic) for all kind of context-free grammars
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Lexical semantics is a subfield of linguistics. It is the study of how and what the words of a language denote (Pustejovsky, 1995). Words may either be taken to denote things in the world, or concepts, depending on the particular approach to lexical semantics.
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Statistical Semantics is the study of "how the statistical patterns of human word usage can be used to figure out what people mean, at least to a level sufficient for information access" (Furnas, 2006).
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Structural semantics deals with relationships between the meanings of terms within a sentence, and how meaning can be composed from smaller elements.
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See also
- Principle of compositionality
- Ferdinand de Saussure
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Prototype Theory is a mode of graded categorization in Cognitive Science, where some members of a category are more central than others. For example, when asked to give an example of the concept furniture, chair is more frequently cited than, say, stool.
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Pragmatics is the study of the ability of natural language speakers to communicate more than that which is explicitly stated. The ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning is called pragmatic competence.
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Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field of study that identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real life problems. Some of the academic fields related to applied linguistics are education, linguistics, psychology, anthropology, and sociology.
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For the academic journal, see .
Language acquisition is the process by which the language capability develops in a human. First language acquisition concerns the development of language in children, while second language acquisition focuses on
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Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language.
..... Click the link for more information.
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Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context on the way language is used. Sociolinguistics overlaps to a considerable degree with pragmatics.
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Linguistic anthropology is that branch of anthropology that brings linguistic methods to bear on anthropological problems, linking the analysis of semiotic and particularly linguistic forms and processes (on both small and large scales) to the interpretation of sociocultural
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Generative linguistics is a school of thought within linguistics that makes use of the concept of a generative grammar. The term "generative grammar" is used in different ways by different people, and the term "generative linguistics" therefore has a range of different,
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In linguistics and cognitive science, cognitive linguistics (CL) refers to the school of linguistics that understands language creation, learning, and usage as best explained by reference to human cognition in general.
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Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical and/or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective. This modeling is not limited to any particular field of linguistics.
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Descriptive linguistics is the work of analyzing and describing how language is spoken (or how it was spoken in the past) by a group of people in a speech community. All scholarly research in linguistics is descriptive; like all other sciences, its aim is to observe the linguistic
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