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Think of the ways we talk about language—they actually cover the major fields of linguistic studies:
How to read this word? —phonetics
Is it "think" or "sink"? —phonology
Does this word have other meanings? — lexicology
What's the meaning of this sentence? — semantics
What do you mean by saying this? — pragmatics
According to different theoretical inheritance, we have names like:
Functional linguistics
Structural linguistics
Chomskyan linguistics
Hallidayan linguistics
However, linguistics is getting more multi-disciplinary and crossdisciplinary. If you are interested in language as a social phenomenon, go to socio-linguistics. In the same vein:
Language and psychology—psycholinguistics
Language and computer—computational linguistics
Language and anthropology—anthropological linguistics
Language and law—forensic linguistics
Language and clinic treatment—clinical linguistics
Language and education—educational linguistics
The list can go on and on as new branches of macro-linguistics develop.
In the following chapters, we try to introduce you to the main areas of study which is different from what linguists are actually doing. So let us get an idea about what is doing linguistics. There is a language called Beja, spoken in the Sudan by nomads living between the Nile and the Red Sea. You hear the following one-word sentence, and your task is to work out how to say "He makes someone walk" in Beja.
1. tamani I eat
2. tamiini He eats
3. giigani I walk
4. tamsani I feed (someone)
[Have you got it? Yes, it's giig-s-iini]. This is a starter-level problem. (Hudson, 1995: 27) If you like you can go on to such descriptive linguistic fieldwork. But of course there are theories behind that and theories built on that. And this course book only aims to pave the way for any future linguistic analysis deeds you may wish to perform.