This is the scientific study of human language. The processes of observation, formulation of hypothesis, experimentation is applied to linguistics. When observation is the ability to observe something or view it deeply. Hypothesis is a statement that hasn’t been scientifically proven. Experiment means to go to the field and verify your observation. E.g. you can pick 20 set of people to verify how they pronounce words. After all verification of observation, you can now formulate your theory based on results obtained.
The aims of linguistic analysis are to find out the following
There are six branches of linguistics
This is a branch of Linguistics that has to do with how a speech sound is produced, received or perceived. It has to do with the study of properties or description of a speech sound.
This branch has to do with the combination of speech sound i.e. the structure or organization of speech sound. In phonology, there could be the description of syllable structures.
This is the study of morphemes. Morpheme is the smallest meaningful linguistic unit of a language. It does not relate to words but it can be used to derive a word or generate a word. E.g. “er” can be used to generate teacher.
It has to do with the organization of morphemes to form words and words to form higher constructions, groups and groups to form sentence. On the other hand, it has to do with the arrangement of words.
This has to do with meaning of words, images, symbols etc. It deals with anything you can deduce meaning from (linguistics is not restricted to written words).
It has to do with meaning but the different between pragmatic and semantic is contextual meaning pragmatics is a branch of linguistics that has to do with meaning E.g. a test result of an exam and a test result of a medical checkup. The two are test results but their contextual analysis is different.
N.B: the sub-fields of linguistics are different from the branches.
This sub-field of linguistics studies human communication within a socio-cultural context. It also studies the origin and or evolution of language.
This sub-field encompasses all applications of linguistic theories and language learning. Applied linguistics is distinguished because it has pedagogical implications
It is the sub-field that studies the relationship of the interface between language and law. It enables the investigation of crime through linguistic principles. It can also be described as the use of linguistic methodology to make legal determinations.
It is concerned with the comprehension, production and abstract knowledge of language (spoken, written or signed) and human brain mechanism.
This deals with the relation between language and the mind. It investigates the processing and production of utterances as well as language acquisition.
The study of the effect to the society (including cultural norms, expectation a context) on the way language id used. This also has to do with the study of language varieties, characteristics of the functions and the characteristics of the speaker of those languages.
This centers around the use of computers to process human language. There are different variations of computational linguistics.
This is the sub-field of linguistics that analysis language beyond sentence or cluster levels. It entails the combination of words and how they are used in larger context.