Linguistics
Created by Shaozhong
Liu
Last updated Oct. 25, 1999
General linguistics Departmental
linguistics
Linguistics programs
(BA, MA, Ph.D)
Publishers
& linguistics journals
Data Banks
Organizations & Events
For links on Chinese linguistics, click
here
Linguistics
at Wake Forest University
General linguistics
What is linguistics?
scientific study of LANGUAGE, covering structure
(GRAMMAR, PHONETICS, morphology) as well as the history of the relations
of languages to one another and language's cultural place in human behavior.
Before the 19th cent. language study was mainly a field of philosophy.
The German philologist Wilhelm von Humboldt felt that language arose spontaneously
from the human spirit: thus languages are different as humans are different.
In 1786 Sir William JONES suggested the affinity of Sanskrit and Persian
with Greek, opening the study of genetic relationships between languages.
With his revelation the school of comparative historical linguistics began.
In the 19th cent. Jakob GRIMM, Rasmus RASK, and others did much study establishing
the existence of the Indo-European language family. In the 20th cent. the
structural or descriptive school of linguistics emerged. The father of
structural linguistics, Ferdinand de SAUSSURE, believed in language as
a systematic structure linking thought and sound; he thought of language
sounds as a series of purely arbitrary linguistic signs. A more recent
school, TRANSFORMATIONAL-GENERATIVE GRAMMAR, has received wide notice
through the works of Noam CHOMSKY.
(The Concise Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Third Edition Copyright
1994, Columbia University Press.)
theses abstracts
Departmental
linguistics
Phonetics Morphology Syntax
Lexicology
& Lexicography Comparative Linguistics Historical
Linguistics Sociolinguistics
Psycholinguistics Cognitive
Linguistics Anthropological
Linguistics
Neurolinguistics Computational
Linguistics Textual
Linguistics
Funtional
Linguistics Applied
Linguistics Semantics
Phonetics
phonetics
system of sounds of language, studied from
two basic points of view.*1*Phonetics is the study of the sounds of language
according to their production in the vocal organs (articulatory phonetics)
or their effect on the ear (acoustic phonetics). All phonetics are interrelated
because human articulatory and auditory mechanisms are uniform. Systems
of phonetic writing are aimed at transcribing accurately any sequence of
speech sounds; the best known is the International Phonetic Alphabet.*2*Each
language uses a limited number of all the possible sounds, called phonemes,
and the hearer-speaker is trained from childhood to classify them into
groups of like sounds, rejecting as nonsignificant all sorts of features
actually phonetically present. Thus the speaker of English ignores sounds
that are very important in another language, e.g., French or
Spanish. Phonemes include all significant differences of sound, among
them features of voicing, place and manner of articulation, accent, and
secondary features of nasalization, glottalization, labialization, and
the like. The study of the phonemes and their arrangement is the phonemics
of a language.
(The Concise
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Third Edition Copyright @1994, Columbia
University Press)
theses
Also see A
reading package; Journals;
Links
Morphology
A reading
package
Journals
Links
Syntax
A reading
package
Journals
Links
Semantics
A reading
package
Journals
Links
Lexicology &
Lexicography
A reading
package
Journals
Links
Comparative
Linguistics
A reading
package
Journals
Links
Historical
Linguistics
A reading
package
Journals
Links
Sociolinguistics
A reading
package
Journals
Links
Psycholinguistics
A
reading package
Journals
Links
Cognitive
Linguistics
A reading
package
Journals
Links
Anthropological
Linguistics
A
reading package
Journals
Links
Neurolinguistics
A reading
package
Journals
Links
Computational
Linguistics
A reading
package
Journals
Links
Textual Linguistics
A reading
package
Journals
Links
Functional
Linguistics
A
reading package
Journals
Links
Applied Linguistics
A
reading package
Journals
Links
Organizations &
Events
American Association for
Applied Linguistics
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages
American Dialect Society
Applied Linguistics Association
of Australia
Association for
Austronesian Languages and Linguistics
British Applied Linguistics Association
British Association for Applied Linguistics
Center for Applied Linguistics
European Language
Resources Association
International Association of Applied Linguistics
International Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics Association (ICPLA)
Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT)
Language in Development Forum
National Association of Bilingual Education
Linguistics Association of
Great Britain
Linguistic Society of America
International
Language Testing Association (ILTA)
Southern Conference on Language Teaching
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