Linguistics is ... The main sections of linguistics

Linguistics is the science of language, studying it both in a complex (as a system), and its separate properties and characteristics: origin and historical past, qualities and functional features, as well as general laws for the construction and dynamic development of all languages on Earth.

Linguistics as a science of language

The main object of research 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 studying them.

Despite the fact that now linguistics is based on a significant theoretical and empirical basis, it should be remembered that linguistics is a relatively young science (in Russia - from the XVIII - the beginning of the XIX century). Nevertheless, it has predecessors with interesting views - many philosophers and grammarians took a great interest in the study of the language, so they have interesting observations and arguments (for example, the philosophers of Ancient Greece, Voltaire and Diderot).

Terminological excursion

The word "linguistics" was not always the indisputable name for the domestic linguistic science. The synonymous series of terms "linguistics - linguistics - linguistics" has its own semantic and historical features.

Initially, before the 1917 revolution, the term "linguistics" was used in scientific circulation. In Soviet times, linguistics became dominant (for example, the university course and textbooks became known as "Introduction to Linguistics"), and its "non-canonical" versions acquired new semantics. Thus, linguistics referred to the pre-revolutionary scientific tradition, and linguistics pointed to Western ideas and techniques, for example, structuralism. As T.V. Shmeleva in the article "Memory of the Term: Linguistics, Linguistics, Linguistics", Russian linguistics has not solved this semantic contradiction until now, since there is a strict gradation, the laws of compatibility and word formation (linguistics → linguistic → linguistic) and the 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 units, printed publications: "prominent" sections of linguistics in the curriculum "Introduction to Linguistics" and "General Linguistics"; Subdivision of RAS "Institute of Linguistics", journal "Questions of Linguistics", book "Essays on Linguistics"; Faculty of Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, "Computer Linguistics", the journal "New in Linguistics" ...

Main sections of linguistics: general characteristics

The science of language "decays" into a multitude of disciplines, the most important of which are such basic 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 research. 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 that examine the functional qualities of the language and its role in the life of society (sociolinguistics, dialectology);
• Sections studying complex problems arising at the border of different sciences and disciplines (psycholinguistics, mathematical linguistics);
• Applied disciplines solve the practical problems posed to linguistics by the scientific community (lexicography, paleography).

General and particular linguistics

The division of the science of language into a general and a particular field demonstrates how global the goals of the scientific interests of researchers are.

The most important scientific questions that are considered by general linguistics are:

• The essence of language, the mystery of its origin and the laws of historical development;
• The basic laws of the device and the function of language in the world as a community of people;
• Correlation of categories "language" and "thinking", "language", "objective reality";
• The birth and perfection of writing;
• Typology of languages, the structure of their linguistic levels, the functioning and historical development of grammatical classes and categories;
• Classification of all languages in the world, and many others.

One of the important international problems that general linguistics tries to solve is the creation and application of new means of communication between people (artificial international languages). The development of this direction is a priority for interlinguistics.

The study of the structure, functioning and historical development of a specific language (Russian, Czech, Chinese), several separate languages or whole families of related languages at the same time (for example, only Romanesque - French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.) is the responsibility of private linguistics. . Private linguistics applies the techniques of synchronous (otherwise - descriptive) or diachronic (historical) research.

General linguistics in relation to the private is a theoretical and methodological basis for the study of any scientific problems connected with 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, on the basis of analysis of which it is possible to draw theoretical conclusions.

External and internal linguistics

The structure of modern science of language is a two-part structure - these are the main sections of linguistics, microlinguistics (or internal linguistics) and extralinguistics (external linguistics).

Micro-linguistics is concentrated on the inner side of the language system - the sound, morphological, vocabulary and syntactic tiers.

Extralinguistics pays attention to a 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 contrast analysis and interdisciplinary research (psycho-, ethnolinguistics, paralinguistics, linguoculturology, etc.) are born.

Synchronous (descriptive) and diachronic (historical) linguistics

The state of the language or its individual levels, facts, phenomena according to their state at a given time interval, a certain stage of development, belongs to the sphere of research in descriptive linguistics. Most often pay attention to the current state, somewhat less often - to the state of development in the previous time (for example, the language of the Russian chronicles of the XIII century).

Historical linguistics deals with the study of various linguistic facts and phenomena from the standpoint of their dynamics and evolution. At the same time, researchers have the goal of capturing the changes that occur in the studied languages (for example, comparing the dynamics of the literary norm of the Russian language in the XVII, XIX and XX centuries).

Linguistic description of language levels

Linguistics studies phenomena related to the different tiers of the general linguistic system. It is customary to distinguish the following language levels: phonemic, lexical-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 language:

• Phonetics (describes the variety of speech sounds in the language, their articulatory and acoustic signs);
• Phonology (studies the phoneme as a minimal unit of speech, its phonological characteristics and functioning);
• Morphology (examines the phonemic structure of morphemes, qualitative and quantitative changes of phonemes in identical morphemes, their variability, establishes the rules of compatibility at the borders of morphemes).

The lexical level of the language is explored in the following sections:

• Lexicology (studies the word as the main unit of language and, in general, words as linguistic wealth, explores the structural features of vocabulary, its expansion and development, sources of vocabulary replenishment);
• 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 (examines issues related to the problem of nomination in the language, with the structuring of the objects of the world during the process of cognition).

Morphological level of the language is studied by the following disciplines:

• Morphology (describes the structural units of the word, the general morphemic composition of the word and the form of word change, parts of speech, their characteristics, essence and principles of isolation);
• Word formation (studying the construction of the word, ways of its reproduction, patterns of structure and formation of the word and its functioning in language and speech).

The syntactic level describes the syntax (it studies cognitive structures and processes of speech generation: the mechanisms of connecting words to complex structures of word combinations and sentences, the types of structural connections of words and sentences, the language processes through which speech is formed).

Comparative and typological linguistics

Comparative linguistics deals with a system approach in comparing a device of at least two or more languages regardless of their genetic relationship. Here, certain milestones can be compared in the development of the same language - for example, the system of case endings of the modern Russian language and the language of the times of Ancient Rus.

Typological linguistics examines the structure and functions of the difference-structured languages in the "timeless" dimension (the panchronic aspect). This allows us to identify common (universal) features inherent in the human language in general.

Language universals

General linguistics in its studies fixes linguistic universals - linguistic patterns inherent in all languages in the world (absolute universals) or in a significant part of languages (statistical universals).

The following features are distinguished as absolute universal:

• For all the languages of the world, vowel sounds and consonant consonant sounds are characteristic.
• The speech stream is divided into syllables, which necessarily are divided into complexes of sounds "vowel + consonant".
• Names of own and pronouns are available in any language.
• The grammatical system of all languages is characterized by names and verbs.
• Each language has a set of words that convey human feelings, emotions or commands.
• If the language has a category of case or gender, then the category of the number is necessarily present.
• If nouns in the language are opposed by gender, the same can be observed in the rank of pronouns.
• All people in the world formulate their thoughts in order to communicate in sentences.
• The writing connection and alliances are present in all the languages of the world.
• Every language of the world has comparative constructions, phraseological expressions, metaphors.
• Universal taboo and symbols of the sun and moon.

Statistical universals include the following observations:

• In the vast majority of the world's languages, there are at least two distinct vowel sounds (except for the Australian Arant language).
• In most of the world's languages, pronouns vary in numbers that are at least two (the exception is the language of the inhabitants of the island of Java).
• Almost all languages have nasal consonants (except some languages of West Africa).

Applied Linguistics

This section of the science of language is directly involved in the development of solutions to problems associated with language practice:

• Improvement of methodological tools in teaching the language both native and foreign;
• Creation of self-tutorials, reference books, educational and thematic dictionaries, applied at different levels and stages of teaching;
• Teaching techniques to speak and write beautifully, accurately, clearly, convincingly (rhetoric);
• The ability to navigate in language norms, mastering spelling (a culture of speech, orthoepia, spelling and punctuation);
• Improvement of spelling, alphabet, writing for non-written languages (for example, for the languages of individual peoples of the USSR in the 1930s-1940s), writing letters and books for the blind;
• Teaching shorthand and transliteration techniques;
• Creation of terminological standards (GOSTs);
• Development of translation skills, creation of two-and multilingual dictionaries of various types;
• The development of the practice of automated machine translation;
• Creation of computerized voice recognition systems, conversion of the spoken word into printed text (engineering or computer linguistics);
• Formation of corpus of texts, hypertexts, electronic databases and dictionaries and development of methods for their analysis and processing (British National Corpus, BNC, National Corpus of the Russian language);
• Development of methodology, copywriting, advertising and PR, etc.