Branches of Linguistics - by Language and Linguistics
Branches of Linguistics
1. Descriptive & Prescriptive
2. Comparative & Historical
3. Applied Linguistics
Prescriptive & Descriptive Linguistics
1. Prescriptive
Prescriptive view of language formulates rules for spoken and
written forms of language.
Concentrates on “how should be a language” rather on “what
is language?”
Major goal is standardization of language, lexicography,
Important issue is resistance to language change.
Descriptive Linguistics
Descriptive view seeks to record language actually used by
native speakers.
Describes how a language works, rather how a language
should be.
Deals with the description and analysis of ways in which
language operates/used by speakers.
Technical branch of linguistics and deals with phonetics,
Phonology, Morphology, Syntax.
Phonetics
Term “Phonetics” derived from the word “Phone”(sound).
Studies the mechanism of production, transmission and
reception of sound.
Main Branches of Phonetics
1. Articulatory Phonetics
2. Acoustic Phonetics
3. Auditory Phonetics
Articulatory Phonetics
It deals with the production of different sounds with the help of
speech organs and the vocal cords.
It includes the production, description and classification of
speech sound.
Acoustic Phonetics
Transmission of sound is known as acoustic phonetics
Studies sound waves and the physical ways in which the
sounds are transmitted from one person to another.
Auditory Phonetics
It studies the mechanism of perception of sounds and how they
are received by the listeners.
It is the study of mechanism of the ear.
Phonology
Phonology is the organization of sounds into patters (Bloomfield,
1995).
It studies the sounds of language.
Deals with phonemes (basic sounds), supra-segmental elements (stress patterns, tones, intonation) of language.
Phonological components alsocover rules that regulate how phonemes can be combined in morphemes and words.
Difference between Phonetics & Phonology
1. Phonetics studies sounds of all languages of the world, however, Phonology studies only particular sounds of a specific language.
2. Phonetics is general, becauseit concerns with speech sounds without reference to their function in a particular language. In contrast, Phonology is the specific and functional because it is concerned with working or functioning of speech sounds in a language.
Morphology
Term derived from the Greek word “morphe” (form) and ‘logy’(study of morphology), so it means the “study of forms”.
Studies the smallest grammatical units of language and their formation into word.
It deals with what morphemes are and how they operate in the structure of word.
Syntax
Word “Syntax” derived from the Greek preposition "Sun”(together) and “tax”(to put in order).
Syntax refers to “putting things together in an orderly manner”
Syntax is the grammar of sentences, a study of the ways in which words can be strung together to form acceptable sentences.
“Study of the combination of morphemes those are not bound on the levels of either inflection or derivation” (Hall, 1969).
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