Linguistics is the science of a language that studies it in a complex (as a system), and its individual properties and characteristics: origin and historical past, qualities and functional features, as well as general laws of construction and dynamic development of all languages on 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 laws of structure, functioning, change of languages and methods of their study.
Despite the fact that linguistics is now based 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 interested in learning the language, therefore, in their works there are interesting observations and reasoning (for example, philosophers of Ancient Greece, Voltaire and Didro).
Terminological excursion
The word "linguistics" has not always been an indisputable naming convention for Russian 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, a university course and textbooks began to be called “Introduction to Linguistics”), and its “noncanonical” variants acquired new semantics. Thus, linguistics referred to the pre-revolutionary scientific tradition, and linguistics pointed to Western ideas and methods, for example, structuralism. As T.V. notes Shmeleva in the article “Memory of the term: linguistics, linguistics, linguistics”, Russian linguistics has not yet resolved this semantic contradiction, since there is a strict gradation, the laws of compatibility and word formation (linguistics → linguistic → linguistically) and a tendency to expand the meaning of the term linguistics ( studying of foreign language). So, the researcher compares the names of linguistic disciplines in the current university standard, the names of structural units, print media: the “prominent” sections of linguistics in the curriculum “Introduction to Linguistics” and “General Linguistics”; Division of the RAS “Institute of Linguistics”, the journal “Questions of Linguistics”, the book “Essays on Linguistics”; Faculty of Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, “Computer Linguistics”, “New in Linguistics” magazine ...
The main sections of linguistics: a general characteristic
The science of language "breaks up" into many 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 study. So, 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 examining the functional qualities of the language and its role in society (sociolinguistics, dialectology);
- sections studying complex problems arising at the borderlands of various sciences and disciplines (psycholinguistics, mathematical linguistics);
- applied disciplines solve the practical problems that the scientific community poses before linguistics (lexicography, paleography).
General and private linguistics
The division of the science of language into general and private fields testifies to how global the goals of the scientific interests of researchers are.
The most important scientific questions considered by general linguistics are:
- the essence of the language, the mystery of its origin and the laws of historical development;
- basic laws of the device and functions of language in the world as a community of people;
- correlation of 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 grammar 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 application 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 applies the methods of synchronous (otherwise descriptive) or diachronous (historical) research.
General linguistics in relation to the particular is the theoretical and methodological basis for the study of any scientific problems associated with the study of the state, facts and processes in a particular language. Private linguistics, in turn, is a discipline that provides empirical data to general linguistics, based on the analysis of which theoretical conclusions can be drawn.
External and internal linguistics
The device of 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 is focused on the inner side of the language system — the sound, morphological, vocabulary, and syntactic tiers.
Extralinguistics draws attention to the huge variety of types of language interaction: with society, human thinking, communicative, emotional, aesthetic and other aspects of life. On its basis, methods of contrastive analysis and interdisciplinary research (psycho-, ethnolinguistics, paralinguistics, linguoculturology, etc.) are born.
Synchronous (descriptive) and diachronic (historical) linguistics
The sphere of studies of descriptive linguistics includes the state of a language or its individual levels, facts, phenomena according to their state at a given time interval, a certain stage of development. Most often they pay attention 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 XIII century).
Historical linguistics studies various linguistic facts and phenomena from the standpoint of their dynamics and evolution. At the same time, researchers have the goal of capturing changes that occur in the languages being studied (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, 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 the language:
- phonetics (describes the variety of speech sounds in a language, their articulation and acoustic features);
- phonology (studies the phoneme as the minimum unit of speech, its phonological characteristics and functioning);
- morphology (considers the phonemic structure of morphemes, qualitative and quantitative changes in 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 the language and, in general, the word as linguistic wealth, 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 a word, the semantic correspondence of a word and a concept expressed by it or an object named by it, a phenomenon of objective reality);
- onomasiology (considers issues related to the problem of nomination in the language, with the structuring of world objects in the course of cognition).
The following disciplines study the morphological level of the language:
- morphology (describes the structural units of a word, the general morphemic composition of a word and the form of inflection, parts of speech, their characteristics, essence and principles of emphasis);
- word formation (it studies the construction of a word, the ways of its reproduction, the laws of the structure and formation of a word and the features of its functioning in language and speech).
The syntactic level describes the syntax (it studies the cognitive structures and processes of speech generation: the mechanisms of combining words into complex structures of phrases and sentences, types of structural relationships of words and sentences, language processes, due to which speech is formed).
Comparative and typological linguistics
Comparative linguistics deals with a systematic approach in mapping the device of at least two or more languages, regardless of their genetic relationship. Here, certain milestones in the development of one and the same language can be compared - for example, the case system of the contemporary Russian language and the language of the times of Ancient Russia.
Typological linguistics considers the structure and functions of different structural languages in the “timeless” dimension (panchronic aspect). This allows you to identify common (universal) features inherent in the human language in general.
Language universals
General linguistics in its studies fixes linguistic universals - linguistic patterns that are characteristic of all languages in the world (absolute universals) or a significant part of languages (statistical universals).
The following features are highlighted as absolute universals:
- All languages of the world are characterized by the presence of vowels and vocal 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.
- Each language has a set of words that convey human feelings, emotions or commands.
- If a language has a case or gender category, then the category of a number is necessarily present in it.
- If nouns in a language are opposed by gender, the same thing can be observed in the category of pronouns.
- All people in the world draw their thoughts in order to communicate in sentences.
- Composing communications and unions are present in all languages of the world.
- Any language of the world has comparative constructions, phraseological expressions, metaphors.
- Universal taboo and the 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 vowels (the exception is the Australian Aranta language).
- In most languages of the world, pronouns vary in numbers, which are at least two (the exception is the language of the inhabitants of Java).
- Almost all languages have nasal consonants (an exception is some West African languages).
Applied Linguistics
This section of the science of language is engaged in the direct development of solutions to problems related to language practice:
- improvement of methodological tools in teaching the language as a mother tongue and as a foreign one;
- the creation of self-study guides, reference books, training and thematic dictionaries used at different levels and stages of teaching;
- teaching techniques to speak and write beautifully, accurately, clearly, convincingly (rhetoric);
- ability to navigate language norms, mastering spelling (speech culture, spelling, spelling and punctuation);
- improvement of spelling, alphabet, development of writing for non-written languages (for example, for languages of certain peoples of the USSR in the 1930s and 1940s), creation of letters and books for the blind;
- training in shorthand and transliteration techniques;
- creation of terminological standards (GOSTs);
- development of translation skills, creation of bilingual and multilingual dictionaries of various types;
- development of automated machine translation practice;
- creation of computerized systems for voice recognition, conversion of spoken words into printed text (engineering or computer linguistics);
- the formation of corpses of texts, hypertexts, electronic databases and dictionaries and the development of methods for their analysis and processing (British National Corpus, BNC, National Corpus of the Russian Language);
- development of techniques, copywriting, advertising and PR, etc.