What is linguistics?

What Does linguistics Mean

The concept of linguistics (a term derived from the French word linguistique ) names what belongs to or is related to language . This word also allows mentioning the science that has the language as its object of study.

In this sense, it must be emphasized that there are currently approximately 6,000 languages ​​in the world. However, Linguistics when studying them is based on a classification of those that is carried out according to the common origin that they may have. That is, they are ordered according to the family.
Thus, starting from this explanation, we can find Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Afro-Asian, Japonic, Korean, Uralic or Indo-Pacific languages, among others.
In this way, linguistics as a science focuses on nature and the guidelines that govern language . Unlike philology , a discipline that delves into the historical evolution of languages ​​in writing and in the context of literature and associated culture, linguistics allows us to discover the functioning of a language at a certain moment, in order to understand its general development .

The modern linguistics arises from the nineteenth century . With the posthumous publication of Ferdinand de Saussure's "Course in General Linguistics" ( 1916 ), linguistics has become a science integrated into semiology . Since then, there has been a need to make a difference between language (understood as the whole system) and speech (that is, its implementation), as well as to review the definition of linguistic sign (resource where the meaning is grouped and the signifier).
In the 20th century , Noam Chomsky developed the trend of generativism , which understands language as a consequence of the speaker's mental processing and in the genetic (or innate, in other words) capacity to incorporate and make use of a certain language.
And all this means that the figure of the linguist Simon Dik cannot be forgotten, who is of Dutch origin and who stands out because he is part of another current within this field that concerns us. Specifically, we are referring to the functionalist school that can be defined as that branch that establishes that language cannot be studied and analyzed independently, but that it is also necessary to take into account what is the use that is given to it. the same.
This fact brings with it that within the functionalist school, in which Dik is one of its greatest figures thanks to his ideas and works such as the one entitled Functional Grammar, great value is given to issues or elements such as linguistic variation or pragmatics. The latter field that is dedicated to studying how the context in which the individual finds himself influences the way of interpreting the meaning in question of language.

The study of language as a system can be carried out at different levels: the phonetic-phonological (phonology and phonetics), the morphological (morphology), the syntactic (syntax), the lexicon (lexicology and lexicography) and the semantic (semantics) .
From the point of view of speech, on the other hand, the text can be considered as the superior unit of communication and pragmatics , which focuses on both enunciation and enunciation.

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