linguistics, scientific study of language language, systematic communication by vocal symbols. It is a universal characteristic of the human species. Nothing is known of its origin, although scientists have identified a gene that clearly contributes to the human ability to use language.
..... Click the link for more information. , covering the structure (morphology and syntax; see grammar grammar, description of the structure of a language, consisting of the sounds (see phonology ); the meaningful combinations of these sounds into words or parts of words, called morphemes; and the arrangement of the morphemes into phrases and sentences, called syntax.
..... Click the link for more information. ), sounds (phonology phonology, study of the sound systems of languages. It is distinguished from phonetics , which is the study of the production, perception, and physical properties of speech sounds; phonology attempts to account for how they are combined, organized, and convey meaning
..... Click the link for more information. ), and meaning (semantics semantics [Gr.,=significant] in general, the study of the relationship between words and meanings. The empirical study of word meanings and sentence meanings in existing languages is a branch of linguistics; the abstract study of meaning in relation to language or
..... Click the link for more information. ), as well as the history of the relations of languages to each other and the cultural place of language in human behavior. Phonetics phonetics (fōnĕt`ĭks, fə–), study of the sounds of languages from three basic points of view.
..... Click the link for more information. , the study of the sounds of speech, is generally considered a separate (but closely related to) field from linguistics.

Early Linguistics

Before the 19th cent., language was studied mainly as a field of philosophy. Among the philosophers interested in language was Wilhelm von Humboldt Humboldt, Wilhelm, Freiherr von (vĭl`hĕlm frī`hĕr fən h
..... Click the link for more information. , who considered language an activity that arises spontaneously from the human spirit; thus, he felt, languages are different just as the characteristics of individuals are different. In 1786 the English scholar Sir William Jones Jones, Sir William, 1746–94, English philologist and jurist. Jones was celebrated for his understanding of jurisprudence and of Oriental languages. He published an Essay on the Law of Bailments (1781), widely used in America as well as in England.
..... Click the link for more information. suggested the possible affinity of Sanskrit and Persian with Greek and Latin, for the first time bringing to light genetic relations between languages. With Jones's revelation the school of comparative historical linguistics began. Through the comparison of language structures, such 19th-century European linguists as Jakob Grimm Wilhelm Grimm (vĭl`hĕlm grĭm), 1786–1859, and which did much to encourage the romantic revival of folklore.
..... Click the link for more information. , Rasmus Rask Rask, Rasmus Christian (räs`m
..... Click the link for more information. , Karl Brugmann Brugmann, Karl (kärl brk`män), 1849–1919, German philologist.
..... Click the link for more information. , and Antoine Meillet, as well as the American William Dwight Whitney Whitney, William Dwight, 1827–94, American Sanskrit scholar and lexicographer, b. Northampton, Mass. After studying in Germany, Whitney became professor of Sanskrit and of comparative philology at Yale.
..... Click the link for more information. , did much to establish the existence of the Indo-European family of languages.

Structural Linguistics

In the 20th cent. the structural or descriptive linguistics school emerged. It dealt with languages at particular points in time (synchronic) rather than throughout their historical development (diachronic). The father of modern structural linguistics was Ferdinand de Saussure Saussure, Ferdinand de (fĕrdēnäN` də sōsür`), 1857–1913, Swiss linguist.
..... Click the link for more information. , who believed in language as a systematic structure serving as a link between thought and sound; he thought of language sounds as a series of linguistic signs that are purely arbitrary, as can be seen in the linguistic signs or words for horse: German Pferd, Turkish at, French cheval, and Russian loshad'. In America, a structural approach was continued through the efforts of Franz Boas Boas, Franz (bō`ăz, –ăs), 1858–1942, German-American anthropologist, b. Minden, Germany; Ph.D. Univ. of Kiel, 1881.
..... Click the link for more information. and Edward Sapir Sapir, Edward (səpēr`), 1884–1939, American linguist and anthropologist, b. Pomerania.
..... Click the link for more information. , who worked primarily with Native American languages, and Leonard Bloomfield Bloomfield, Leonard, 1887–1949, American linguist, b. Chicago. Bloomfield was professor at Ohio State Univ. (1921–27), at the Univ. of Chicago (1927–40), and at Yale (from 1940).
..... Click the link for more information. , whose methodology required that nonlinguistic criteria must not enter a structural description. Rigorous procedures for determining language structure were developed by Kenneth Pike, Bernard Bloch, Charles Hockett, and others.

See also structuralism structuralism, theory that uses culturally interconnected signs to reconstruct systems of relationships rather than studying isolated, material things in themselves. This method found wide use from the early 20th cent.
..... Click the link for more information. .

Transformational-Generative Grammar

In the 1950s the school of linguistic thought known as transformational-generative grammar received wide acclaim through the works of Noam Chomsky Chomsky, Noam (nōm chŏm`skē), 1928–, educator and linguist, b. Philadelphia.
..... Click the link for more information. . Chomsky postulated a syntactic base of language (called deep structure), which consists of a series of phrase-structure rewrite rules, i.e., a series of (possibly universal) rules that generates the underlying phrase-structure of a sentence, and a series of rules (called transformations) that act upon the phrase-structure to form more complex sentences. The end result of a transformational-generative grammar is a surface structure that, after the addition of words and pronunciations, is identical to an actual sentence of a language. All languages have the same deep structure, but they differ from each other in surface structure because of the application of different rules for transformations, pronunciation, and word insertion. Another important distinction made in transformational-generative grammar is the difference between language competence (the subconscious control of a linguistic system) and language performance (the speaker's actual use of language). Although the first work done in transformational-generative grammar was syntactic, later studies have applied the theory to the phonological and semantic components of language.

Other Areas of Linguistic Study

In contrast to theoretical schools of linguistics, workers in applied linguistics in the latter part of the 20th cent. have produced much work in the areas of foreign-language teaching and of bilingual education in the public schools (in the United States this has primarily involved Spanish and, in the Southwest, some Native American languages in addition to English). In addition, such subfields as pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics have gained importance.

Bibliography

See F. de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (tr. 1966); J. Lyons, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (1968), and Language and Linguistics (1981); N. Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1969); A. Radford, Transformational Syntax (1982); F. J. Newmeyer, Linguistics (4 vol., 1988); W. J. Frawley, ed., International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2d ed., 4 vol., 2003).

linguistics

Study of the nature and structure of language. It traditionally encompasses semantics, syntax, and phonology. Synchronic linguistic studies aim to describe a language as it exists at a given time; diachronic studies trace a language's historical development. Greek philosophers in the 5th century BC who debated the origins of human language were the first in the West to be concerned with linguistic theory. The first complete Greek grammar, written by Dionysus Thrax in the 1st century BC, was a model for Roman grammarians, whose work led to the medieval and Renaissance vernacular grammars.

With the rise of historical linguistics in the 19th century, linguistics became a science. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Ferdinand de Saussure established the structuralist school of linguistics (see structuralism), which analyzed actual speech to learn about the underlying structure of language. In the 1950s Noam Chomsky challenged the structuralist program, arguing that linguistics should study native speakers' unconscious knowledge of their language (competence), not the language they actually produce (performance). His general approach, known as transformational generative grammar, was extensively revised in subsequent decades as the extended standard theory, the principles-and-parameters (government-binding) approach, and the minimalist program. Other grammatical theories developed from the 1960s were generalized phrase structure grammar, lexical-functional grammar, relational grammar, and cognitive grammar. Chomsky's emphasis on linguistic competence greatly stimulated the development of the related disciplines of psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. Other related fields are anthropological linguistics, computational linguistics, mathematical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and the philosophy of language.