From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Someone who engages in this study is called a linguist. Linguistics can be theoretical or applied.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to linguistics:

Essence of linguistics

Main article: Linguistics

Branches of linguistics

• Theoretical linguistics
• Applied linguistics

Subfields of linguistics

• Computational linguistics
• Comparative linguistics
• Contrastive linguistics
• Corpus linguistics
• Dialectology
• Discourse analysis
• Etymology
• Forensic linguistics
• Grammar
• Historical linguistics
• Interlinguistics
• Language didactics
• Language learning
• Language teaching
• Language for specific purposes
• Lexicology
• Linguistic statistics
• Linguistic typology
• Morphology
• Neurolinguistics
• Orthography
• Phonetics
• Phonology
• Pragmatics
• Psycholinguistics
• Rhetoric
• Semantics
• Sociolinguistics
• Stylistics
• Text linguistics

Schools, movements, and approaches of linguistics

• Cognitive linguistics
• Danish School
• Functionalism
• Generative linguistics
• Geneva School
• Neo-Grammarians
• Prague School
• Prescription and description
• Soviet linguistics
• Stratificational linguistics
• Structuralism
• Systemic linguistics
• SIL International
• Tagmemics (See [1])

History of linguistics

Main article: History of linguistics

Timeline of discovery of basic linguistics concepts

When were the basic concepts first described and by whom?

• Ancient Sanskrit grammarians
• Ancient Greek study of language
• Roman elaborations of Greek study
• Medieval philosophical work in Latin
• Beginnings of modern linguistics in the 19th century
• Behaviorism and mental tabula rasa hypothesis
• Chomsky and functionalism
• Generative grammar leads to generative phonology and semantics
• Alternate syntactic systems develop in 80s
• Computational linguistics becomes feasible the late 80s
• Neurolinguistics and the biological basis of cognition

Basic questions in linguistics

What are the basic questions asked in linguistics?

1. What is language?
2. How did it/does it evolve?
3. How does language serve as a medium of communication?
4. How does language serve as a medium of thinking?
5. What is common to all languages?
6. How do languages differ?

(The answers are not necessarily basic or easy to understand.)

Basic concepts

What basic concepts / terms do I have to know to talk about linguistics?

• Morphology
  • morpheme, inflection, paradigm, derivation, compound
• Phonology
  • phoneme, segment, syllable, foot, stress
• Grammar
  • tense, aspect, grammatical number, grammatical gender, declension
• Syntax
  • phrase, clause, grammatical function, grammatical voice
• Lexicology
  • word, lexeme, lemma, lexicon, vocabulary, terminology
• Semantics
  • meaning, sense, entailment, truth condition, compositionality
• Pragmatics
  • presupposition, implicature, deixis

Languages of the world

Languages by country

Languages of North America Sovereign states Antigua and Barbuda · Bahamas · Barbados · Belize · Canada · Costa Rica · Cuba · Dominica · Dominican Republic · El Salvador · Grenada · Guatemala · Haiti · Honduras · Jamaica · Mexico · Nicaragua · Panama1  · Saint Kitts and Nevis · Saint Lucia · Saint Vincent and the Grenadines · Trinidad and Tobago1 · United States Dependencies and other territories Anguilla · Aruba1  · Bermuda · British Virgin Islands · Cayman Islands · Greenland · Guadeloupe · Martinique · Montserrat · Netherlands Antilles1 · Puerto Rico · Saint Barthélemy · Saint Martin · Saint Pierre and Miquelon · Turks and Caicos Islands · United States Virgin Islands 1 Territories also in or commonly considered to be part of South America.

Languages of South America Sovereign states Argentina · Bolivia · Brazil · Chile · Colombia · Ecuador · Guyana · Panama1  · Paraguay · Peru · Suriname · Trinidad and Tobago1 · Uruguay · Venezuela Dependencies Aruba1 / Netherlands Antilles1 (Netherlands) · Falkland Islands / South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (UK) 2 · French Guiana (France) 1 Territories also in or commonly considered to be part of North America and/or Central America.  2 Territories also in or commonly considered to be part of Antarctica.

Linguistics scholars

Main article: List of linguists

People who had a significant influence on the development of the field

• John Langshaw Austin
• Leonard Bloomfield
• Franz Bopp
• Noam Chomsky
• M.A.K. Halliday
• Louis Hjelmslev
• Roman Jakobson
• Sir William Jones
• Pāṇini
• Kenneth L. Pike
• Rasmus Rask
• Edward Sapir
• Ferdinand de Saussure
• August Schleicher
• John R. Searle
• Claude Lévi-Strauss
• Nikolai Trubetzkoy
• Noah Webster
• Benjamin Lee Whorf

Linguistics lists

• Languages
  • Language families and languages
  • ISO 639
  • Official languages
  • Definitions by language
• Alphabets & Orthography

• Common misspellings
• English words without rhymes
• Words commonly mispronounced
• Words of disputed pronunciation
• Acronym
  • Wiktionary:Definitions of acronyms and abbreviations

See also

Linguistics portal

• Number of words in English
• Lexicography

External links

• Glottopedia, MediaWiki-based encyclopedia of linguistics, under construction
• Subfields according to the Linguistic Society of America
• Glossary of linguistic terms and French<->English glossary at SIL International
• "Linguistics" section of A Bibliography of Literary Theory, Criticism and Philology, ed. J. A. García Landa (University of Zaragoza, Spain)
• Linguistics and language-related wiki articles on Scholarpedia and Citizendium