2. Objectives of Linguistics

In its most general sense linguistics is the study of language. It embraces all aspects of human communication, from a description of the sounds of speech to the analysis of the way in which the full complexities of thought are expressed in spoken or written form. Linguistics is often called “the science of language” and in many ways this is justified since it is concerned with observing facts about language, setting up hypotheses, testing their validity and accepting or rejecting them accordingly. Linguistics is scientific in its methodology. The linguist attempts to describe how a language works, not to give opinions as to how it should work or what is “correct” and “incorrect”.

Linguistics has two major roles:

1. to establish a workable theory of language at all levels from phonology to semantics;

2. to apply theoretical considerations to a description or analysis of language / languages.

Although there are many schools of thought regarding the development of a theory of language but there is a fundamental dichotomy between the data-orientated approach and a purely theoretical one. The former suggests that a theory can be deduced from observable data and disregards other considerations, whereas the latter puts forward a series of hypotheses to be tested not only against the observable data but against such considerations as a speaker’s intuitive knowledge.

Linguistic analysis begins with the identification of the sounds of speech, shows how these are combined into contrasting groups and meaningful elements and examines the structure of words and their relationship in larger structures.

3.1. Human language peculiarities

When we talk about language as a system of communication, we are speaking of human language. The matter is that animals have communication systems and they do communicate in a variety of ways, but these are in general primitive and instinctive and incapable of expressing a wide range of concepts. Dogs bark, cats mew, etc.

This is in the process of evolution, that the man developed a brain with for greater capacity than the most advanced of the animals for the manipulation of the process of thinking. Human language symbolises thought with the help sounds and groups of sounds letters which are used to signify concepts with which the sounds and letters selves have no immediate connection. It is important to consider some physiological properties of the human species as prerequisites for the production of language. The physical aspects of human teeth, larynx and so on are not shared by other creatures and may explain why only the human creature has the capacity for speech. However, the human is the only creature which is capable of communicating. All creatures, from apes, bees, dolphins to zebras, are capable of communicating with other members of their species. The range and complexity of animal communication systems are staggering and we could not hope even to summarize their diverse proper­ties. What we can do, as part of an investigation of language, is concen­trate on those properties which differentiate human language from all other forms of signaling and which make it a unique type of communication system.