Linguistics is the science of language, studying it both in its entirety (as a system), and its individual properties and characteristics: origin and historical past, qualities and functional features, as well as the general laws of construction and dynamic development of all languages in Earth.
Linguistics as a science of language
The main object of study of this science is the natural language of mankind, its nature and essence, and the subject is the patterns of structure, functioning, changes in languages and methods of their study.
Despite the fact that now linguistics relies on a significant theoretical and empirical base, it should be remembered that linguistics is a relatively young science (in Russia - from the 18th - early 19th centuries). Nevertheless, it has predecessors with interesting views - many philosophers and grammarians were fond of studying the language, so there are interesting observations and reasoning in their works (for example, the philosophers of Ancient Greece, Voltaire and Diderot).
Terminological digression
The word "linguistics" was not alwaysindisputable name for the domestic linguistic science. The synonymous series of terms "linguistics - linguistics - linguistics" has its own semantic and historical features.
Initially, before the revolution of 1917, the term linguistics was used in scientific circulation. In Soviet times, linguistics began to dominate (for example, the university course and textbooks for it began to be called "Introduction to Linguistics"), and its "non-canonical" variants acquired a new semantics. Thus, linguistics referred to the pre-revolutionary scientific tradition, and linguistics pointed to Western ideas and methods, such as structuralism. As T. V. Shmelev in the article “Memory of a term: linguistics, linguistics, linguistics”, Russian linguistics has not yet resolved this semantic contradiction, since there is a strict gradation, laws of compatibility and word formation (linguistics → linguistics → linguistics) and a tendency to expand the meaning of the term linguistics (studying of foreign language). Thus, the researcher compares the names of linguistic disciplines in the current university standard, the names of structural divisions, printed publications: the “distinguishing” sections of linguistics in the curriculum “Introduction to Linguistics” and “General Linguistics”; subdivision of the Russian Academy of Sciences "Institute of Linguistics", the journal "Issues of Linguistics", the book "Essays on Linguistics"; Faculty of Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, Computational Linguistics, New in Linguistics journal…
The main sections of linguistics: general characteristics
The science of language "breaks up" into many disciplines, the most importantamong which are such main sections of linguistics as general and particular, theoretical and applied, descriptive and historical.
In addition, linguistic disciplines are grouped on the basis of the tasks assigned to them and based on the object of study. Thus, the following main sections of linguistics are traditionally distinguished:
- sections devoted to the study of the internal structure of the language system, the organization of its levels (for example, morphology and syntax);
- sections describing the dynamics of the historical development of the language as a whole and the formation of its individual levels (historical phonetics, historical grammar);
- sections considering the functional qualities of the language and its role in society (sociolinguistics, dialectology);
- sections that study complex problems that arise on the borderline of different sciences and disciplines (psycholinguistics, mathematical linguistics);
- applied disciplines solve practical problems that the scientific community sets before linguistics (lexicography, paleography).
General and private linguistics
The division of the science of language into general and private areas indicates how global the goals of the scientific interests of researchers are.
The most important scientific questions that general linguistics considers are:
- the essence of language, the mystery of its origin and patterns of historical development;
- basic laws of the structure and functions of language in the world as a community of people;
- correlation between the categories "language" and "thinking", "language", "objective reality";
- the origin and improvement of writing;
- typology of languages, the structure of their language levels, the functioning and historical development of grammatical classes and categories;
- classification of all languages existing in the world, and many others.
One of the important international problems that general linguistics is trying to solve is the creation and use of new means of communication between people (artificial international languages). The development of this direction is a priority for interlinguistics.
Private linguistics is responsible for the study of the structure, functioning and historical development of a particular language (Russian, Czech, Chinese), several separate languages or entire families of related languages at the same time (for example, only Romance languages - French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and many others). Private linguistics uses the methods of synchronous (otherwise - descriptive) or diachronic (historical) research.
General linguistics in relation to the particular is the theoretical and methodological basis for the study of any scientific problems related to the study of the state, facts and processes in a particular language. In turn, private linguistics is a discipline that provides general linguistics with empirical data, based on the analysis of which theoretical conclusions can be drawn.
External and internal linguistics
The structure of the modern science of language is represented by a two-part structure - these are the main sections of linguistics, microlinguistics (or internal linguistics) and extralinguistics (external linguistics).
Microlinguistics focuses on the inner side of the language system - sound, morphological, vocabulary and syntactic tiers.
Extralinguistics draws attention to the huge variety of types of interaction of language: with society, human thinking, communicative, emotional, aesthetic and other aspects of life. On its basis, methods of contrastive analysis and interdisciplinary research are born (psycho-, ethnolinguistics, paralinguistics, linguoculturology, etc.).
Synchronic (descriptive) and diachronic (historical) linguistics
The field of research of descriptive linguistics includes the state of the language or its individual levels, facts, phenomena according to their state at a given time period, a certain stage of development. Most often, attention is paid to the current state, somewhat less often - to the state of development in the previous time (for example, the language of Russian chronicles of the 13th century).
Historical linguistics studies various linguistic facts and phenomena from the standpoint of their dynamics and evolution. At the same time, the researchers aim to record the changes that occur in the studied languages (for example, comparing the dynamics of the literary norm of the Russian language in the 17th, 19th and 20th centuries).
Linguistic description of language levels
Linguistics studies phenomena related to different tiers of the general language system. It is customary to distinguish the following language levels: phonemic, lexico-semantic, morphological, syntactic. In accordance with these levels, the following main sections of linguistics are distinguished.
The following sciences are associated with the phonemic level of the language:
- phonetics (describes the variety of speech sounds in the language, their articulatory and acoustic features);
- phonology (studies the phoneme as the smallest unit of speech, its phonological characteristics and functioning);
- morphonology (considers the phonemic structure of morphemes, qualitative and quantitative changes in phonemes in identical morphemes, their variability, establishes compatibility rules at the boundaries of morphemes).
The following sections explore the lexical level of the language:
- lexicology (studies the word as the basic unit of the language and the word as a whole as a linguistic we alth, explores the structural features of vocabulary, its expansion and development, sources of replenishment of the vocabulary of the language);
- semasiology (explores the lexical meaning of the word, the semantic correspondence of the word and the concept it expresses or the object named by it, the phenomenon of objective reality);
- onomasiology (considers issues related to the problem of nomination in language, with the structuring of objects in the world during the process of cognition).
The morphological level of the language is studied by the following disciplines:
- morphology (describes the structural units of the word, generalmorphemic composition of the word and forms of inflection, parts of speech, their characteristics, essence and principles of selection);
- word formation (studies the construction of a word, methods of its reproduction, patterns of structure and formation of a word and features of its functioning in language and speech).
The syntactic level describes the syntax (studies the cognitive structures and processes of speech production: the mechanisms of combining words into complex structures of phrases and sentences, types of structural connections of words and sentences, language processes due to which speech is formed).
Comparative and typological linguistics
Comparative linguistics deals with a systematic approach in comparing the structure of at least two or more languages, regardless of their genetic relationship. Here, certain milestones in the development of the same language can also be compared - for example, the system of case endings of the modern Russian language and the language of the times of Ancient Russia.
Typological linguistics considers the structure and functions of languages with different structures in the "timeless" dimension (panchronic aspect). This allows you to identify common (universal) features inherent in human language in general.
Language universals
General linguistics in its research captures linguistic universals - linguistic patterns that are characteristic of all languages in the world (absolute universals) or a significant part of languages (statistical universals).
Asabsolute universals, the following features are highlighted:
- All languages of the world are characterized by the presence of vowels and stop consonants.
- The speech stream is divided into syllables, which are necessarily divided into complexes of sounds "vowel + consonant".
- Proper names and pronouns are available in any language.
- The grammatical system of all languages is characterized by names and verbs.
- Every language has a set of words that convey human feelings, emotions or commands.
- If a language has the category of case or gender, then it also has the category of number.
- If nouns in a language are opposed by gender, the same can be observed in the category of pronouns.
- All people in the world shape their thoughts into sentences for the purpose of communication.
- Composition and conjunctions are present in all languages of the world.
- Any language of the world has comparative constructions, phraseological expressions, metaphors.
- Taboo and symbols of the sun and moon are universal.
Statistical universals include the following observations:
- In the absolute majority of languages of the world there are at least two distinct vowels (the exception is the Australian language Aranta).
- In most languages of the world, pronouns change by numbers, of which there are at least two (the exception is the language of the inhabitants of the island of Java).
- Almost all languages have nasal consonants (with the exception of some West African languages).
Applied Linguistics
This section of the science of language deals with the direct development of solutions to problems related to language practice:
- improving methodological tools in teaching a language as a native language and as a foreign one;
- creation of tutorials, reference books, educational and thematic dictionaries used at different levels and stages of teaching;
- learning how to speak and write beautifully, accurately, clearly, convincingly (rhetoric);
- the ability to navigate the language norms, mastery of spelling (culture of speech, orthoepy, spelling and punctuation);
- improvement of spelling, alphabet, development of writing for non-written languages (for example, for the languages of certain peoples of the USSR in the 1930-1940s), creation of writing and books for the blind;
- training in shorthand and transliteration;
- creation of terminological standards (GOSTs);
- development of translation skills, creation of bilingual and multilingual dictionaries of various types;
- developing an automated machine translation practice;
- creation of computerized voice recognition systems, converting spoken word into printed text (engineering or computational linguistics);
- formation of text corpora, hypertexts, electronic databases and dictionaries and development of methods for their analysis and processing (British National Corpus, BNC, Russian National Corpus);
- development of methodology, copywriting, advertising and PR, etc.
