Selasa, 29 Desember 2009

linguistics 2

Fundamental concerns and divisions

Linguistics concerns itself with describing and explaining the nature of human language. Relevant to this are the questions of what is universal to language, how language can vary, and how human beings come to know languages. All humans (setting aside extremely pathological cases) achieve competence in whatever language is spoken (or signed, in the case of signed languages) around them when growing up, with apparently little need for explicit conscious instruction. While non-humans acquire their own communication systems, they do not acquire human language in this way (although many non-human animals can learn to respond to language, or can even be trained to use it to a degree).[10] Therefore, linguists assume, the ability to acquire and use language is an innate, biologically-based potential of modern human beings, similar to the ability to walk. There is no consensus, however, as to the extent of this innate potential, or its domain-specificity (the degree to which such innate abilities are specific to language), with some theorists claiming that there is a very large set of highly abstract and specific binary settings coded into the human brain, while others claim that the ability to learn language is a product of general human cognition. It is, however, generally agreed that there are no strong genetic differences underlying the differences between languages: an individual will acquire whatever language(s) he or she is exposed to as a child, regardless of parentage or ethnic origin.[11]
Linguistic structures are pairings of meaning and form; such pairings are known as Saussurean signs. In this sense, form may consist of sound patterns, movements of the hands, written symbols, and so on. There are many sub-fields concerned with particular aspects of linguistic structure, ranging from those focused primarily on form to those focused primarily on meaning:
  • Phonetics, the study of the physical properties of speech (or signed) production and perception
  • Phonology, the study of sounds (or signs) as discrete, abstract elements in the speaker's mind that distinguish meaning
  • Morphology, the study of internal structures of words and how they can be modified
  • Syntax, the study of how words combine to form grammatical sentences
  • Semantics, the study of the meaning of words (lexical semantics) and fixed word combinations (phraseology), and how these combine to form the meanings of sentences
  • Pragmatics, the study of how utterances are used in communicative acts, and the role played by context and non-linguistic knowledge in the transmission of meaning
  • Discourse analysis, the analysis of language use in texts (spoken, written, or signed)
Many linguists would agree that these divisions overlap considerably, and the independent significance of each of these areas is not universally acknowledged. Regardless of any particular linguist's position, each area has core concepts that foster significant scholarly inquiry and research.
Alongside these structurally-motivated domains of study are other fields of linguistics, distinguished by the kinds of non-linguistic factors that they consider:
The related discipline of semiotics investigates the relationship between signs and what they signify. From the perspective of semiotics, language can be seen as a sign or symbol, with the world as its representation.

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