What is Linguistics?

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It endeavors to answer the question - what is language and how is represented in the mind? Linguists focus on describing and explaining language and are not concerned with the prescriptive rules of the language (i.e., do not split infinitives). Linguists are not required to know many languages and linguists are not interpreters. The underlying goal of the linguist is to try to discover the universals concerning language. That is, what the common elements of all languages are. The linguist then tries to place these elements in a theoretical framework that will describe all languages and also predict what cannot occur in a language. Linguistics is a social science that shares common ground with other social sciences such as psychology, anthropology, sociology and archaeology. Some of the branches of linguistics are: Theoretical APPLIED LINGUISTICS , LANGUAGE ACQUISITION, PSYCHOLINGUISTICS, SOCIOLINGUISTICS, LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY, GENERATIVE LINGUISTICS, COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS, COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS, DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS, HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS, COMPARATIVE LINGUISTICS, ETYMOLOGY, STYLISTICS, PRESCRIPTION, CORPUS LINGUISTICS, NEUROLINGUISTICS, PARALINGUISTICS, BIOLINGUISTICS, among others. Linguistics may also influence other disciplines such as English, Communication Studies and Computer Science. Linguistics for the most part though can be considered a cognitive science. Along with psychology, philosophy and computer science, linguistics is ultimately There are several concerned with how the human brain functions. different auxiliary disciplines within linguistics. The fields of pragmatics, semantics, syntax, morphology, phonetics, phonology, and language acquisition are considered the core fields of study and a firm knowledge of each one of them is necessary in order to

What is linguistics focused on?

Do linguists describe language?

Is linguistics related to other sciences?

What are the basic questions asked in linguistics?

1. What is language? 2. How did it/does it evolve? 3. How does language serve as a medium of communication? 4. How does language serve as a medium of thinking? 5. What is common to all languages? 6. How do languages differ?

Lic. Julio Reyes

7. How do linguistic structures relate to the sounds we utter, and how do these relate to the meanings that we express? 8. What is the structure of these sounds, and how are they articulated? 9. How does human language differ from the communication systems of animals? 10. How can the prehistory of a language be reconstructed?

What is Philology?
The term PHILOLOGY is derived from the GREEK (philologia), from the terms (philos), meaning "love" and (LOGOS), meaning "word ", describing a love of learning, of literature as well as of argument and reasoning. The term changed little with the Latin philologia, and later entered the English language in the 16th century, from the MIDDLE FRENCH philologie, in the sense of "love of literature".
What is Philology related to?

What does the term Philolog y mean?

In this sense, Philology deals with the criticism of the written texts (records), and in a more general perspective, to all the information that can be deduced from texts (especially antique texts). That is to say, Philology is related to the study of written records in order to obtain information about life, culture, family and social relationships, as well as, economical, political, and religious data of a given place at a given time.

Linguistics vs. Philology

Some people have mistaken Linguistics and Philology; this confusion may not seem unjustified though, because it corresponds to the similarities between these two sciences, such as: the fact of the term Philology been used to refer linguistic sciences, but the existent tendency is to eliminate this ambiguity. In other words, meanwhile a Linguist generally considers texts as linguistic facts or language phenomena; a Philologist considers texts as cultural and historical documents. The distinction between these sciences may seem subtle, due to sometimes a Philologist will have to recur to the linguistic facts in order to accomplish his task (e.g.: establishing the date or authenticity of a text) and, a Linguist will be able to deduce (from the linguistic facts) information or data about the social and cultural history which are not explicit from the text. That is to say, normally, Linguistics is an auxiliary science of Philology and vice versa.

Are Linguistic s and Philology mutually exclusive ?

Lic. Julio Reyes

Lic. Julio Reyes