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1.7 Branches in Linguistics

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. LElL6DRbVqf5IDbGbmK4xXWTNzLmOLlnMP8w942o/G2iWi9o+4IhtgJkDLHUTZJp

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