Linguistics

• Linguistics is the theoretical study of lingual (language is associated with the interpretation and understanding of signs) aspect of language
• Like history, linguistics is also considered as a humanities because it deals with language, which is considered as a gateway to human mind.
• During the Western colonization of the world, the chroniclers accounted for the languages of their colonized units. This provided information for the new study of language.
• Andreas Jager (1660-1730) believed that the mother language of all languages in Europe and some parts of Asia originated from the Caucasus mountains
• William Jones (1746-1832) discovered that there was a similarity between the languages of Asian and European languages.
• In the late 19th and 20th centuries, the study of languages shifted from the study of language history to the structure of languages.
• Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), a Swiss linguist, is considered the pioneer of modern linguistics. He believed that language is a system of arbitrary signs.
• Noam Chomsky (1928-present), an American linguist, believes that human speech constitutes the knowledge of the speaker of their grammar, as well as their biologically innate language faculty (the mind innately knows its language).
• Physical aspects: phonetics or how humans measure and identify voices and sounds
• Biological aspects: speech organs: brain, tongue, lips, etc.
• Psychological aspects: processes, models of production of languages, memory, planning, comprehension
• Social aspects: means of communication, the development, preservation, and modification of the languages
• Diachronic linguistics: studies change and evolution of language
• Synchronic linguistics: the study of language at a given time
• Syntax: studies the principles of forming and understanding correct sentences
• Morphology: studies the internal structure of words and how they are formed
• Pragmatics: the study of the meaning of words in a larger context
• Stylistics: studies language and literature