6) Connections of Linguistics with other disciplines

Each human language is a complex of knowledge and abilities enabling speakers of the language to communicate with each other, to express ideas, hypotheses, emotions, desires, and all the other things that need expressing. Linguistics is the study of these knowledge systems in all their aspects: how is such a knowledge system structured, how is it acquired, how is it used in the production and comprehension of messages, how does it change over time? Linguists consequently are concerned with a number of particular questions about the nature of language. What properties do all human languages have in common? How do languages differ, and to what extent are the differences systematic, i.e. can we find patterns in the differences? How do children acquire such complete knowledge of a language in such a short time? What are the ways in which languages can change over time, and are there limitations to how languages change? What is the nature of the cognitive processes that come into play when we produce and understand language?

The part of linguistics that is concerned with the structure of language is divided into a number of subfields:

Phonetics - the study of speech sounds in their physical aspects

Phonology - the study of speech sounds in their cognitive aspects

Morphology - the study of the formation of words

Syntax - the study of the formation of sentences

Semantics the study of meaning

Pragmatics - the study of language use

Aside from language structure, other perspectives on language are represented in specialized or interdisciplinary branches:

Historical Linguistics

Sociolinguistics

Psycholinguistics

Ethnolinguistics (or Anthropological Linguistics)

Dialectology

Computational Linguistics

Psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics

Because language is such a central feature of being a human, Linguistics has intellectual connections and overlaps with many other disciplines in the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. Some of the closest connections are with Philosophy, Literature, Language Pedagogy, Psychology, Sociology, Physics (acoustics), Biology (anatomy, neuroscience), Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Health Sciences (Aphasia, Speech Therapy).

However, because of the centrality of language in human interaction and behavior, the knowledge gained through the study of linguistics has many practical consequences and uses. Graduates of undergraduate and graduate programs in Linguistics apply their training in many diverse areas, including language pedagogy, speech pathology, speech synthesis, natural language interfaces, search engines, machine translation, forensics, naming, and of course all forms of writing, editing, and publishing. Perhaps the most widely appreciated application was contributed by UCSC Linguistics alumnus Marc Okrand, who invented the Klingon language for Star Trek.

7) Morphological type

The morphological type of a language refers to the way morphemes combine into words.

1. Isolating (or analytic) languages have words that consist of one morpheme each. There probably is no ideal isolating language, but Chinese and Vietnamese come close. English is sometimes cited as an isolating language as well, even though it is not purely isolating, but weakly fusional.

2. Agglutinating languages have words that may consist of more than one morpheme; the morpheme boundaries are clear and the word can be easily broken up into morphemes. Each of the inflectional morphemes fulfils a single grammatical function. An example is Turkish:

(1a) ev 'house'

(1b) evde 'in the house'

(1c) evler 'houses'

(1d) evlerde 'in the houses'

The last form can be easily broken up into three morphemes: ev is the word stem (the same in all four forms), -ler the plural marker (the same as in (1c), and -de the locative case marker (the same as in(1b)).

3. Fusional languages have words that may consist of more than one morpheme; unlike agglutinating languages, the morpheme boundaries are blurred, and morphemes may express several grammatical categories in one unsegmentable unit. Most Indo-European languages are of this type. An example is Latin:

(2a) homo 'man' (nom. sg.)

(2b) homini 'man' (dat. sg.)

(2c) homines 'men' (nom. pl.)

(2d) hominibus 'men' (dat. pl.)

The stem form varies between homo in (2a) and homin- in the other forms; the form (2d) shows the dative plural ending -ibus which cannot be broken up into a dative and a plural morpheme (as comparison with (2b) and (2c) shows).

These three types are rarely met in pure form, but form a continuum in which each language finds its place. Agglutinating and fusional languages are often grouped together as synthetic languages. The term inflecting is often used for fusional, but sometimes also for synthetic languages in general. It is thus ambiguous and best avoided.

Two further common terms for morphological types are:

4. Polysynthetic languages are languages that are highly synthetic, with very complex words that can function as whole sentences, combining subject, object and verb in one word. Polysynthetic languages may be agglutinating or fusional.

5. Oligosynthetic languages are not really a morphological type, and they apparently do not occur among natural languages. An oligosynthetic language has only a limited set (a few dozen to a few hundred) of basic morphemes from which all words are built up.

English language morphological type

Analytic languages show a low ratio of morphemes to words; in fact, the correspondence is nearly one-to-one. Sentences in analytic languages are composed of independent root morphemes. Grammatical relations between words are expressed by separate words where they might otherwise be expressed by affixes, which are present to a minimal degree in such languages. There is little to no morphological change in words: they tend to be uninflected. Grammatical categories are indicated by word order (for example, inversion of verb and subject for interrogative sentences) or by bringing in additional words (for example, a word for 'some' or 'many' instead of a plural inflection like English -s). Individual words carry a general meaning (root concept); nuances are expressed by other words. Finally, in analytic languages context and syntax are more important than morphology.

Analytic languages include some of the major East Asian languages, such as Chinese, and Vietnamese. Additionally, English is moderately analytic (probably one of the most analytic of Indo-European languages)."