What Is Linguistic?
Linguistics
is the scientific study of Language. Linguists (people who are
specialists in Linguistics) do work on specific languages, but their primary
goal is to understand the nature of Language in general: …what
distinguishes human language from other animal communication systems? …what
features are common to all human languages? …how are the modes of linguistic
communication (speech, writing, sign language of the deaf) related to each
other? …how is Language related to other types of human behavior?
The
main goal of the study of Linguistics in an academic setting, like all other
intellectual disciplines, is to increase our knowledge and understanding of the
world. However, since Language is universal and fundamental to all human
interactions, the knowledge attained in Linguistics has many practical
applications. Linguists, with some training in other appropriate
disciplines, would thus be prepared to seek answers to questions such as the
following: …how can a previously unstudied language be analyzed and written?
…how can foreign languages best be taught and learned? …how can speech be synthesized
on a computer or (far more difficult) how can a computer be programmed to
understand human speech? …how can the language problems of people with speech
abnormalities be analyzed and rectified? …how are linguistic issues in legal
matters to be handled.
And the part of linguistics
that is concerned with the sound of language is divided into a number of
subfields:
1.
Phonetics:
This is the study of speech sounds themselves. Phoneticians study
both the production of speech sounds by the human speech organs (articulatory
phonetics) and the properties of the sounds themselves (acoustic
phonetics). Phoneticians are concerned with such questions as the
following: …what are the sounds, from among all those that humans could make,
that actually exist in the world’s languages? …what specially defines different
“accents”? …can speakers be identified by “voiceprints”? ...what are the
properties of sounds that would go into computerized speech synthesis?
