Linguistics

     

     The study of the nature, structure and variation of language including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics and pragmatics. It deals with language of every period and in all the guises it assumes. Linguistics has to deal with the written language,and will often have to  rely on its insights of philology in order to take its bearings among these written texts what lies underneathe.
     The task or object of the scientific study of languages is to trace the history of all known languages, which in its turn brings to the studyof the history of a language family. Before Latin, there is a period which Greek and Slavic share in common. So this involves the history of language families, as and when relevant.

       Another task of linguistics is to derive from this history of all the languages themselves laws of the greatest generality. Linguistics recognises laws operating universally in language, and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restricted to one branch of languages or another. There are more special tasks to add; concerning the relations between linguistics and various sciences. Some are related by reason of the information and data they borrow, while others, on the contrary, supply it and assist its work.

     Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context:

     The first is the study of language structure or grammar.This focuses on the system of rules followed by the speakers(or hearers) of a language. It encompasses morphology, syntax and phonology. It is important to mention that Phonetics is a related branch of linguistics concerned with the actual properties of speech sounds and nonspeech sounds and how they are produced and perceived.

     The study of language meaning is concerned with how languages employ logical structures and real-world references  to convey, process, and assign meaning, as well as  to manage  and resolve ambiguity. It encompasses semantics and pragmatics. Language in its broader context includes evolutionary linguistics, which considers the origins of language; historical linguistics, which explores language change; sociolinguistics, which looks at the relation between linguistic variation and social structures; psycholinguistics, which explores the representation and function of language in the mind; neurolinguistics, which looks at language processing in the brain; language acquisition, how children or adults acquire language; and discourse analysis, which involves the structure of texts and conversations.