Linguistics: The field of linguistic, the scientific study of human natural language, is a growing and exciting area of study, with an important impact on fields as diverse as education, anthropology, sociology, language teaching, cognitive psychology, philosophy, computer science, among others. Linguistics is concerned with the nature of language and (linguistic) communication.
Semantics: Is the study of meaning. An understanding of semantics is essential to the study of language acquisition (how language users acquire a sense of meaning, as speakers and writers, listeners and readers) and of language change (how meanings alter over time). It is important for understanding language in social contexts, as these are likely to affect meaning, and for understanding varieties of English and effects of style. The study of semantics includes the study of how meaning is constructed, interpreted, clarified, obscured, illustrated, simplified, negotiated, contradicted and paraphrased.
Prescriptive linguistics: It is also called “prescriptivism”, is the act of taking the official models of a language, and treating them as sacred perfect representations of the language, and enforcing them on people. For example, correcting someone who uses the word “ain’t”, even if it’s used in an appropriately casual way.
Descriptive Linguistics: It is also called “descriptivism”, and is the study of language as it is spoken (and written). The study of the grammar, classification, and arrangement of the features of a language at a given time, without reference to the history of the language or comparison with other languages.
Ethnography: The study and systematic recording of human cultures; also: a descriptive work produced from such research. The practice of ethnography usually involves fieldwork in which the ethnographer lives among the population being studied. While trying to retain objectivity, the ethnographer lives an ordinary life among the people, working with informants who are particularly knowledgeable or well placed to collect information.
Ethnolinguistics: A study of the relations between linguistic and nonlinguistic cultural behavior. It means the study of language as an aspect or part of culture, especially the study of the influence of language on culture and of culture on language.
Sociolinguistics: It is the study of the relation between language and society--a branch of both linguistics and sociology. Sociolinguistics encompasses a broad range of concerns, including bilingualism, pidgin and creole languages, and other ways that language use is influenced by contact among people of different language communities (e.g., speakers of German, French, Italian, and Romansh in Switzerland). Sociolinguists also examine different dialects, accents, and levels of diction in light of social distinctions among people.
Generative grammar: Is a branch of theoretical linguistics that works to provide a set of rules that can accurately predict which combinations of words are able to make grammatically correct sentences. Generative grammar has been associated with several schools of linguistics, including transformational grammar, relational grammar, categorical grammar, and lexical-functional grammar. Generative grammar can be thought of as a way of formalizing the implicit rules a person seems to know when he or she is speaking in his or her native language.
Universal grammar: In linguistics, the theory of universal grammar holds that there are certain fundamental grammatical ideas which all humans possess, without having to learn them. Universal grammar acts as a way to explain how language acquisition works in humans, by showing the most basic rules that all languages have to follow.
The basic idea of universal grammar, that there are foundational rules in common among all humans, has been around since the 13th century.
Neurolinguistics: The study of the neurological mechanisms underlying the storage and processing of language. Although it has been fairly satisfactorily determined that the language centre is in the left hemisphere of the brain in right-handed people, controversy remains concerning whether individual aspects of language are correlated with different specialized areas of the brain.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario