Linguistics is a science of scientists. Linguistics as the science of language

Any object, phenomenon, event, even a person, can be studied. Various scientists are engaged in this, and accordingly we can talk about different types of sciences. Let's talk to you about what linguistics is. What area of ​​our reality is affected by this science, what do scientific linguists do, what is the need for these studies.

What does linguistics study?

Linguistics is also called linguistics or linguistics. As you may have guessed, linguistics is the science of the languages ​​of the world, the natural language of man.

Linguists look at the universal features of languages ​​and explain the variations between them.

It is clear that language as a whole is an abstract concept (linguists do not study the human organ), that is, some facts of speech are observed - speech acts and language materials (texts).

How does linguistics study?

Linguistic scientists observe facts of speech, record them and describe them. Next, hypotheses are put forward to explain these facts. Based on these hypotheses, theories and models that describe language are built. Of course, testing and confirmation or refutation takes place experimentally, after which this or that speech behavior is predicted.

The explanation of the facts goes along two lines. The internal one concerns the linguistic facts themselves; the outer line of explanation concerns social, psychological, logical and physiological facts.

Languages ​​develop and change. Dynamism explains the need for language studies and the importance of linguistics.

Sections of linguistics

1. Practical. Field of study with real linguistic experiments. Its purpose is to verify the provisions of theoretical linguistics and test the effectiveness of applied linguistics.
2. Theoretical linguistics. The goal is to build linguistic theories.
3. Applied. The goal is to solve practical problems related to language; use of linguistic theories in various fields.

Linguistics occupies a special place, since many of the points it studies lead to areas of knowledge that seem to lie beyond its boundaries, and yet one cannot do without linguistic discoveries in them.

Science of Language

In the most general sense of the word, linguistics is (the second name of this science is linguistics). In school, this usually means that areas of language such as sounds, words, sentence structure, parts of speech and text are studied, most often referring to the native language. These areas of knowledge are really interesting and necessary, but if everything ended only with the structure of the native language, its structure, linguistics would be very crowded. After all, language contains a huge number of interesting secrets.

Linguistics and computers

It will seem strange to many, but without linguistic discoveries, humanity would not have created computers and computer programs. In this area of ​​knowledge, linguistics is very close to mathematics and is called computer linguistics. Computational linguistics is the science that studies issues such as artificial intelligence, machine translation, programming languages, speech recognition, etc., and it is the data of applied linguistics that allows computer programs and methods of communication to be improved so quickly.

Linguistics and history

For historians, linguistics is a field of knowledge that provides data about the origins of man. Any historical discoveries concerning antiquity are largely based on linguistic data. The kinship and origin of languages, the prevalence of a particular language in a certain region, the etymology (origin) of words - these are questions the answers to which turn into serious arguments for historians. Often it is new data about the language of a particular people that puts an end to a historical dispute or destroys ideas about history.

Literary historians, when deciding the authorship of a particular work, also rely primarily on linguistic data.

Linguistics and medicine

For a doctor, linguistics is a science that studies the mechanisms of speech. Violations that seem mild at first glance can make it clear to a qualified neurologist that the patient has serious damage to the nervous system. Based on the nature of speech disorders, an experienced specialist can often determine how serious the impairment of a person’s brain activity is, and how deep the patient’s examination should be. The opposite is also true: often the restoration of speech indicates that the treatment strategy was chosen by the doctor correctly, and the recovery process (for example, rehabilitation after a stroke) is successful.

For a speech therapist, linguistics is also the science of speech mechanisms, but most often he solves the problems of articulating (pronouncing, pronouncing) sounds. Knowledge of how a person speaks, how exactly he pronounces sounds, what movements he makes for this, how he breathes, helps speech therapists not only improve the diction of healthy children, but also work with persons with serious pronunciation disorders, with children who were brought up in poor conditions , and did not learn to speak correctly in time.

Linguistics and foreign language learning

When learning a foreign language in an “artificial” way, anyone in one way or another encounters linguistic knowledge. The study of foreign sounds, verb conjugations, meanings of foreign words, sentence structure - all this is a field of linguistics. However, this is only a small part of the linguistic knowledge that relates to learning a foreign language. The most interesting thing, of course, turns out to be beyond the boundaries of a school textbook or self-teacher.

Linguistics as the science of language raises questions about how a person generally learns to speak, first of all, in his native language. How is it that every person acquires such extensive knowledge while being very young? How does this happen? Perhaps some kind of “program” is embedded in his brain from birth, such as the “program” to walk on two legs? What are the features of the child’s brain that allow the child to master the most complex system of knowledge - language - in a short time? A separate area deals with such issues. For an ontolinguist, linguistics is the science that studies the miracle of a young child’s comprehension of language. And it is the knowledge gained as a result of ontolinguistic research that allows us to shed light on how to learn foreign languages ​​more productively.

Although a child’s path cannot be repeated at school or adulthood, knowledge about many mechanisms of language acquisition, stages and techniques allows competent specialists to quickly teach foreigners another language, adapt them to life in a new country, teach them not to feel like strangers in it, give their children a chance to find a second homeland.

Linguistics and poetry

Another area without which linguistics as a deep and subtle science is unimaginable is the study of the language of works of art. Subtle observations of linguists reveal the secrets of the birth of a masterpiece, the secrets of talent, help to realize the full depth of the work, understand not only one’s own, but also other people’s culture, and therefore expand the horizons of human knowledge.

Probably, every professional linguist who loves his job will think deeply about the question of whether science can only be given the most general, since in each of its fields it ultimately deals with what is still incomprehensible, unknown, what is only a little ajar to a person.

Linguistics (linguistics) - the science of language in all the complexity of its manifestation; natural human language in general and about all the languages ​​of the world as its individual representatives.

Linguistics is a humanities science. It is a branch of cultural studies (along with art and literary studies) and philology (along with literary studies), as well as a branch of semiotics - the science of signs.

Linguistics took shape as a separate discipline in the mid-19th century. Linguistics is the science of language in general and individual languages ​​of the world as its individual representatives.

Subject of linguistics

Linguistics studies not only existing (existing or possible in the future) languages, but also human speech at all. Speech is not given to the linguist by direct observation; Only facts of language, or linguistic phenomena, are directly observed, that is, speech acts of speakers of a living language along with their results (texts) or language material (a limited number of written texts in a dead language, which no one uses as the main means of communication).

Subject and object of study of linguistics

Being a humanities science, linguistics does not always separate the subject of knowledge (that is, the psyche of the linguist) from the object of knowledge (that is, from the thing being studied), especially if the linguist studies his native language. Linguists often become people who combine subtle linguistic intuition (flair) with heightened linguistic reflection (the ability to think about their speech instinct). Relying on reflection to obtain linguistic data is called introspective.

Sections of linguistics

Sections and areas of linguistics:

• Theoretical linguistics
  • Phonetics - studies the sound composition of a language.
    • Phonology - studies the structure of the sound composition of a language (speech units and means) and their functioning in the language system.
  • Grammar - studies the structure of language.
    • Morphology - studies phenomena that characterize the grammatical nature of a word as a grammatical unit of speech.
    • Syntax - studies phrases and sentences, their structure, types and combinations into supraphrasal units.
  • Lexicology - studies vocabulary (vocabulary of a language)
    • Phraseology - studies lexically indivisible combinations of words.
    • Lexicography - the science of concluding dictionaries
    • Onomastics is the science of names.
    • Etymology - studies the origin and history of words in a language.
  • Semantics - studies the meaning of words and their components, phrases and phraseological units.
  • Lexical semantics is the science of the meaning of words.
  • Statistical semantics
    • Structural semantics
    • Prototypical semantics
  • Pragmatics is a section of semiotics that covers the relationship between participants in communication, sender and addressee, speaker and listener.
• Applied linguistics - studies the application of linguistic theory in practice.
  • Language Acquisition
  • Psycholinguistics - studies the processes of speech activity, perception and creation of language, the intentions of the speaker in the process of performing a speech act.
  • Sociolinguistics - studies a set of issues related to the social nature of language, its social functions, the mechanism of influence of social factors on language and the role that language plays in the life of society.
  • Anthropological linguistics
  • Communication linguistics
  • Generative linguistics
  • Cognitive linguistics considers the functioning of language as a type of cognitive, i.e. cognitive activity, and explores cognitive mechanisms and structures of human consciousness through linguistic phenomena.
  • Mathematical (computer) linguistics - aims to use mathematical models to describe natural languages.
  • Descriptive (synchronic) linguistics - descriptive linguistics.
  • Historical linguistics
  • Comparative linguistics is a complex of linguistic disciplines that use comparisons.
  • Stylistics - studies style in all linguistic meanings of this term (individual manner of performing speech acts, functional style of speech, style of speech, etc.)
    • Pripisova linguistics
  • Corpus linguistics deals with the creation, processing and use of corpora.
• History of linguistics
• Specific (studies individual languages ​​or groups of languages) and general linguistics (studies all languages ​​of the world)
• Unsolved problems

Among most humanities, special attention should be paid to linguistics. This science has a great influence on the lives of each of us, and its individual sections are studied not only in universities, but also in schools.

Let's talk about what linguistics is and what its main branches are.

Definition of linguistics

Linguistics is a science that studies language, its development, phenomena, elements and units that make up a particular language. The term comes from the Latin lingua - "language". The original Russian term linguistics is considered a synonym for linguistics.

Most linguistic disciplines are studied at universities in philological faculties, and we become acquainted with the basics of linguistics in elementary school during Russian and foreign language lessons.

Classical branches of linguistics

So, we have found out what linguistics is, and now we can talk about its main sections. The main or classical sections of linguistics, which each of us becomes familiar with throughout our schooling, are phonetics, graphics, morphology, syntax, lexicology and phraseology, as well as stylistics.

Learning any language begins with phonetics and graphics.

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies the sound structure of a language, sounds and syllables. Graphics deals with the study of letters and their relationship with sounds.

The next section of linguistics that is taught at school is grammar. This is a science that studies the structure of language. Consists of two sections: morphology and syntax. Morphology studies the parts of speech of a language and their word formation and inflection. Syntax studies phrases and sentences. Note that syntax is closely related to punctuation, which studies the rules for using punctuation marks.

Periodically, while studying a language, schoolchildren study other branches of linguistics: lexicology and phraseology, stylistics.

Lexicology is a science that studies the vocabulary of a language, establishing the meaning of words and the norms of their use. Lexicology examines synonyms and antonyms, paronyms, the lexical composition of a language by origin and social use.

Phraseology is a section that studies phraseological units, that is, stable expressions of a particular language.

Stylistics is the science of speech styles and means of linguistic expression. At school, students are constantly exposed to artistic, journalistic, scientific, and epistolary styles of language. They learn not only to recognize them, but also to independently create texts in one style or another.

Special sections

When entering the university at the Faculty of Philology, students continue their acquaintance with linguistics, learn what linguistics is and how many sections and sciences it actually contains.

Thus, linguistics is divided into theoretical, which deals with the problems of linguistic models, and applied, aimed at finding solutions to practical problems related to the study of language and its use in other fields of knowledge. In addition, there is practical linguistics, which deals with the problems of transmission and cognition of language.

Theoretical linguistics includes the previously mentioned sections of linguistics, such as morphology and syntax, lexicology, stylistics and others.

Applied branches of linguistics

Applied branches of linguistics include cognitive linguistics, dialectology and history of language, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, ethnolinguistics, lexicography, linguodidactics, terminology, translation, and computer linguistics.

Each of these sections deals with the study of one or another area of ​​the language and its application.

Thus, ethnolinguistics deals with the study of language in its connection with the culture of the people.

Psycholinguistics is a science at the intersection of psychology and linguistics. She studies the relationship between language, thinking and consciousness.

Cognitive linguistics deals with establishing connections between language and human mental activity, his attention and memory, and language perception.

Computational linguistics deals with problems of machine translation, automatic text recognition, information retrieval and even linguistic expertise.

Lexicography is also quite interesting - the science that deals with compiling dictionaries.

The history of language studies the development of language, and in this it is significantly helped by another linguistic discipline - dialectology.

As you can see, this is not a complete list of sections and disciplines that modern linguistics studies. Every year more and more new linguistic disciplines appear, more and more new language problems related to the development and improvement of language are studied.

conclusions

Linguistics is a science that deals with the study of languages ​​and their structure. It has many language sections, and every year there are more and more of them. We become acquainted with some linguistic disciplines at school, but the bulk of them are studied in philological faculties.

Now you know what linguistics is and what main sections it consists of.

Linguistics (linguistics, linguistics; from lat. lingua- language) is a science that studies languages. This is the science of natural human language in general and of all the languages ​​of the world as its individual representatives. In the broad sense of the word, linguistics is divided into scientific and practical. Most often, linguistics refers to scientific linguistics. It is part of semiotics as the science of signs.

Linguistic scientists are professionally engaged in linguistics.

Subject of linguistics

Linguistics studies not only existing (existing or possible in the future) languages, but also human language in general. Language is not given to the linguist by direct observation; Only facts of speech, or linguistic phenomena, are directly observable, that is, speech acts of speakers of a living language along with their results (texts) or linguistic material (a limited number of written texts in a dead language, which no one uses as the main means of communication).

Linguistics in the epistemological aspect

Linguistics involves observation; registration and description of speech facts; developing hypotheses to explain these facts; formulation of hypotheses in the form of theories and models describing language; their experimental verification and refutation; predicting speech behavior. The explanation of facts can be internal (through linguistic facts) or external (through physiological, psychological, logical or social facts).

Subject and object of linguistics

As a discipline that has a number of fundamental features of the humanities, linguistics does not always separate the subject of knowledge (that is, the psyche of the linguist) from the object of knowledge (that is, from the language being studied), especially if the linguist studies his native language. Linguists often become people who combine subtle linguistic intuition (a sense of language) with heightened linguistic reflection (the ability to think about one’s linguistic sense). Relying on reflection to obtain linguistic data is called introspection.

Sections of linguistics
Linguistics in the broad sense of the word (knowledge of language and transfer of the results of this knowledge to other people) is divided into:
theoretical linguistics:
scientific, which involves the construction of linguistic theories;
applied linguistics:
specializes in solving practical problems related to language learning, as well as in the practical use of linguistic theory in other areas;
practical linguistics: is the area where linguistic experiments are actually carried out with the goal of verifying the provisions of theoretical linguistics and testing the effectiveness of products created by applied linguistics.

Theoretical linguistics

Theoretical linguistics studies the laws of language and formulates them as theories. It happens:

• empirical: describing real speech;
• normative: indicating how one “should” speak and write (prescriptive, prescriptive).

We can talk not only about “languages,” but also about “Language” in general, since the languages ​​of the world have much in common. Therefore, they distinguish:

• general linguistics: studies the common (statistically dominant) features of all languages, both empirically (inductively) and deductively, exploring general trends in the functioning of language, developing methods for its analysis and defining linguistic concepts. Part of general linguistics is linguistic typology, which compares different languages ​​regardless of the degree of their relationship and draws conclusions about Language in general. It identifies and formulates linguistic universals, that is, hypotheses that hold true for most of the described languages ​​of the world;
• private linguistics: studies a single language, a group of related languages, or a pair of contacting languages. It distinguishes sections either by individual language (for example, Russian studies, Japanese studies), or by a group of related languages ​​(for example, Slavic studies, Roman studies, Turkic studies), or by cultural area, which includes geographically and/or typologically similar languages ​​(for example, Balkan studies , Caucasian studies).

Applied linguistics

Applied areas of linguistics have long been distinguished by wide diversity. The most ancient of them are writing (graphics), methods of teaching native and non-native languages, lexicography. Subsequently, translation, decoding, spelling, transliteration, and development of terminology appeared. One of the traditional areas of applied linguistics is participation in the state language policy.

Practical linguistics

Cybernetic models of language are tested by how closely they mimic human speech; The adequacy of descriptions of dead languages ​​is tested during excavations, when archaeologists discover new texts in ancient languages.

Empirical linguistics

Empirical linguistics obtains linguistic data in three ways:
The method of introspection, on which introspective linguistics is based.
Using the experimental method (see: linguistic experiment) - observing the behavior of speakers of living dialects, which is what experimental linguistics does. It includes in particular:
field linguistics, working with speakers of dialects that the linguist does not speak;
instrumental linguistics, which uses instruments, including sound recording equipment;
neurolinguistics, which experiments directly with the human brain.
Using philological methods, collecting material from dead written languages ​​and interacting with philology, which studies written monuments in their cultural and historical connections.

The description can be focused on written and oral speech; it can either be limited only to the “correct” language, or also take into account various deviations from it (see: vernacular); can describe either only a system of patterns that operate in all varieties of language, or also include rules for choosing between options depending on extra-linguistic factors.

Monolingual and comparative linguistics

Monolingual linguistics (in older terminology, descriptive linguistics) is limited to the description of one language, but can distinguish different linguistic subsystems within it and study the relationships of similarities and differences between them. Thus, diachronic linguistics compares different time slices in the history of a language, identifying losses and innovations; dialectology compares its territorial variants, identifying their distinctive features; stylistics compares different functional varieties of language, recording the similarities and differences between them, etc.
Comparative linguistics compares languages ​​with each other. It includes:
comparative studies (in the narrow sense), or comparative historical linguistics, which studies the relationships between related languages;
contactology and areal linguistics (arealogy), which studies the interaction of neighboring languages;
comparative (contrastive, confrontational) linguistics, which studies the similarities and differences of languages ​​(regardless of their kinship and proximity).

Comparative historical linguistics studies the history of languages ​​and identifying their genealogical connections (see: genetic classification of languages). This section of linguistics can describe a chronological cross-section of a language in a certain historical era, during the life of one generation (synchronic linguistics studies language as a system, sets itself the task of establishing the principles underlying any of the systems taken at a given moment), (sometimes also called “ synchronous"), or to study the process of language change itself as it is transmitted from generation to generation (historical linguistics, sometimes also called “diachronic” or “diachronic”).

External and internal linguistics

External linguistics (social linguistics, sociolinguistics) describes: language in all the diversity of its social variants and their functions; the dependence of the choice of “code” (that is, the language system) on the social affiliation of the speaker (class and professional choice), on his regional affiliation (territorial choice - dialect) and on the communicative situation of the interlocutors (functional stylistic choice - style).
Internal linguistics (in another terminology - structural linguistics) abstracts from this social conditioning, considering language as a homogeneous code.

Linguistics of language and linguistics of speech
Linguistics of language studies language as a code, that is, a system of objectively existing socially assigned signs and rules for their use and compatibility. Speech linguistics studies speech activity, that is, the processes of speaking and understanding occurring over time (the dynamic aspect of speech is the subject of the theory of speech activity), together with their results - speech works (the static aspect of speech is the subject of text linguistics). Linguistics of speech includes linguistics of the speaker (studying the active aspect of speech - the activity of the sender of messages, that is, encoding - speaking, writing, composing texts) and linguistics of the listener (studying the passive aspect of speech - the activity of the recipient of messages, that is, decoding - listening, reading, understanding texts)

.Static and dynamic linguistics
Static linguistics studies the states of language (including the state of an individual’s linguistic ability - language proficiency), adynamic linguistics - processes (changes in language over time; age-related phases of language ability: formation of speech ability, language acquisition, language forgetting).

General linguistics

Within linguistics, sections are distinguished in accordance with different aspects of its subject.
Thus, phonetics and graphics study the “perceptible” (auditory or visual) side of linguistic signs (“plane of expression”), and semantics, on the contrary, their “semantic” (understood and translated) side (“plane of content”).
Lexicology studies the individual properties of individual linguistic signs, and grammar studies the general rules of their combination, use and understanding.
Within grammar, it is customary to distinguish such sections as morphology (the science of the grammatical properties of a word) and syntax (the science of the grammatical properties of sentences and phrases).

The corresponding disciplines differ from each other in their focus on studying units of different levels of language:
The subject of phonetics is considered to be such units as speech sounds, their characteristics and classes, phonemes and relationships between them, as well as prosody phenomena - the structure of a syllable, the structure of a beat and the role of stress in it, the rules of intonation, that is, the sound design of phrases and sentences.
In a similar way, graphics studies the properties of the elementary units of written speech - graphemes, letters, hieroglyphs.
The units of morphology are considered to be the morpheme and the word in their relationships (rules for constructing nominative units (word forms) from the simplest significative units (morphemes) and, conversely, dividing word forms into morphemes).
The units of syntax are considered to be the structure of such constructed units of language as a free phrase (pre-communicative constructed unit) and a free sentence (communicative constructed unit), and more recently also the STS (complex syntactic whole) and, finally, a connected text. The smallest unit of syntax - a word form with its syntactics (that is, combinability properties) is an inventory nominative unit and at the same time the maximum unit of morphology.
The units of semantics are considered to be, on the one hand, simpler (or even elementary) units - meanings with their components and distinctive features (semes), and on the other hand - the rules by which more complex meaningful formations - meanings - are built from these simpler units .
The units of pragmatics are human utterances - specific speech acts produced by certain participants in communication in a certain setting, correlated with a certain reality, focused on achieving certain goals (in particular, the message), as well as general universal rules for the creation and interpretation of utterances.

Linguistic terminology

The language studied by the linguist is an object language; and the language in which the theory is formulated (the description of the language, for example, grammar or vocabulary in the corresponding meanings) is a metalanguage. The metalanguage of linguistics has its own specifics: it includes linguistic terms, names of languages ​​and linguistic groups, special writing systems (transcription and transliteration), etc. Metatexts are created in the metalanguage (that is, texts about the language); these are grammars, dictionaries, linguistic atlases, maps of the geographical distribution of languages, language textbooks, phrase books, etc.

History of linguistics

In ancient times, the science of language (“grammar”) studied only the native language of the scientist, but not foreign languages; only the prestigious languages ​​of spiritual culture, and the living spoken language of the people (and even more so of illiterate, unliterate peoples) was not studied. Until the 19th century, the science of language was prescriptive (normative), seeking not to describe the living language that is spoken, but to provide rules by which one “should” speak (and write).