Theoretical linguistics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Theoretical linguistics is that branch of linguistics that is most concerned with developing models of linguistic knowledge. Part of this endeavor involves the search for and explanation of linguistic universals, that is, properties all languages have in common. The fields that are generally considered the core of theoretical linguistics are syntax, phonology, morphology, and semantics. Phonology is often informed by phonetics, which like psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics is often excluded from the purview of theoretical linguistics.
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[edit] Major fields in theoretical linguistics
[edit] Phonetics
Phonetics is the study of the articulation, the perception and the physical aspects of speech sounds. In everyday usage and in language courses the term is usually misunderstood as the teaching of pronunciation. As the definition suggests, phonetics is divided further into three major subfields:
- Articulatory phonetics analyses the movements of speech organs by which certain sounds are produced. Fundamental concepts of phonetics are defined in this subfield, such as articulation, the classification of speech sounds, and phonetic transcription. Appliances of articulatory phonetics include the teaching of pronunciation, speech therapy etc.
- Auditory phonetics is concerned with the perception of speech sounds through the ear (hence auditory), and begins with the anatomy of this organ in a similar way to articulatory phonetics. Knowledge of auditory phonetics is crucial in the treatment of deafness.
- Acoustic phonetics studies the physical aspects of speech sounds.
[edit] Phonology
Phonology is the branch of theoretical linguistics concerned with speech sounds at a higher level than phonetics, i.e their structure and organisation in human languages. According to this definition, phonology is always preceded by phonetics, which provides materials for the subfield to analyse.
[edit] Morphology
Morphology is the study of word structure. For example in the sentences The dog runs and The dogs run, the word forms runs and dogs have an affix -s added, distinguishing them from the bare forms dog and run. Adding this suffix to a nominal stem gives plural forms, adding it to verbal stems restricts the subject to third person singular. Some morphological theories operate with two distinct suffixes -s, called allomorphs of the morphemes Plural and Third person singular, respectively. Languages differ wrt. to their morphological structure. Along one axis, we may distinguish analytic languages, with few or no suffixes or other morphological processes from synthetic languages with many suffixes. Along another axis, we may distinguish agglutinative languages, where suffixes express one grammatical property each, and are added neatly one after another, from fusional languages, with non-concatenative morphological processes (infixation, Umlaut, Ablaut, etc.) and/or with less clear-cut suffix boundaries.
[edit] Syntax
Syntax is the study of language structure and word order. It is concerned with the relationship between units at the level of morphology or words, depending upon whether you are studying syntax at MIT or Stanford. Syntax seeks to delineate exactly those sentences which make up a given language, using native speaker intuition. Syntax seeks to describe formally exactly how structural relations between elements (lexical items/words and operators) in a sentence contribute to its interpretation. Syntax uses principles of formal logic and Set Theory to formalize and represent accurately the hierarchical relationship between elements in a sentence. Abstract syntax trees are often used to illustrate the hierarchical structures that are posited. Thus, in active declarative sentences in English the subject is followed by the main verb which in turn is followed by the object (SVO). This order of elements is crucial to its correct interpretation and it is exactly this which syntacticians try to capture. They argue that there must be such a formal computational component contained within the language faculty of normal speakers of a language and seek to describe it.
[edit] Semantics
Semantics is the study of intensive meaning in words and sentences.
Semantics can be expressed through diction (word choice) and inflexion. Inflexion may be conveyed through an author's tone in writing and a speaker's tone of voice, changing pitch and stress of words to influence meaning.
