Linguistics

Summary of Linguistics for Beginners by W. Terrence Gordon

Linguistics is a language that study language. It is a tool that enables us to
do analysis of language. In order to be clearer, we can describe as a manual of a
car, one can drive a car without reading the manual but a mechanic cannot fix a
car without reading the manual. The mechanic in this case is a linguist
meanwhile the process of fixing a car is called linguistics.
The term linguist are interpret differently in ancient time and in modern
time. Linguists in ancient time are the people who mastered many languages.
For example, King Mithridates (132-63 B.C) was consider as a linguist because he
was fluent in 22 languages. Meanwhile, linguist nowadays refer to the people
who do analysis on language.
Similar to linguist, linguistics also had its definition changes after time.
Linguistics in the past was to tell how a language should behave. It force the
language to stick very closely to the rules of grammar and the exception is very
narrow. But, modern linguistics have a very different function, it describe,
analyse, explain, and theorize language. Unlike old linguistics, modern linguistics
do not dictate how the language should be used. One of the famous initiator of
modern linguistics is Noah Chomsky.
The linguists had sorted language into several branches, namely,
phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. All these branches explore
different aspect in a language and they are inter-connected. Four of them should
come together in the process of learning a language, none of them is to be
forsake. In fact, phonology is inseparable from semantics, morphology is
inseparable from phonology, and syntax is inseparable from morphology. In the
other hand, semantics is the messiest level of linguistics because human mind is
good at making and multiplying multiple meanings.
Phonology is the study of sound. Every particular sets of sound stand for a
particular meaning. Besides, phonology also studies how a sound is being
articulate. The main element in phonology is vowels and consonants. Every
vowels and consonants are differentiated by their manner and place of
articulation.
Morphology is the study of words formation. In this field, we will encounter
with the problems of how word are formed and how do we analyse it.
Nevertheless, we will also study the method of how to form new words.
Morphology make a language rich in terms of glossary because new words
continue to be added into the glossary by various method.
Syntax is the study of sentence. By studying syntax, well learn about the
structure of a sentence and how does the position for each word affect the
meaning of the sentence. It is important because it makes our language
understandable either in verbally or non-verbally conveyed. There are 2 main
division in syntax study, namely paradigmatic relation (vertical relation) and
syntagmatic relation (horizontal relation).
Semantics is the study of meaning. In word level, semantics study the
connotation of words but in sentence or paragraph level, semantics will explain
the word meaning according to the context and why is this word chosen but not
the other. Every language is consider as a symbol that carries meaning. In order
to understand the meaning, we should tackle it with the knowledge of semantics.
The meaning of a word in a language might means differently in other
languages. This is probably due to the variation of culture. For example, there
are several words in Labradorian Inuit to describe different type of snow, but in
English, there is only one word called snow to describe snow. In this case, if
someone is to translate snow in English to Labradorian Inuit, he should be aware
of the word that what word is to be used to avoid mistranslation of meaning.
In short, linguistics cover every single aspect in a language, from the level
of sound up to the level of meaning. Linguistics is truly important in modern time
because language are being localised and the linguist ought to know how to
differentiate the language in different place rather than to do corrections on it.
Enough of the discussion of what linguistics is, now we move further to the
relationship between language and the world. There are estimated 3000 to 5000
languages on the planet, and each of them are relatives with others. Yet, there
are still some exceptions that comes without connection with other languages.
So, to understand this situation, we should know how language is formed. There
are several theories that tell how language is formed. The first theory is the Bow-
Bow theory, stated that human beings imitate the sound of surrounding
particularly animal sound. Second, the Pooh-Pooh theory which states that
spoken language started with expressing instinctive emotion such as pain, anger,
and other bodily troubles. Following by the Ding-Dong theory which became the
root of language that show how humans react towards the environment. Lastly,
the Yo-Heave-Ho theory. This theory is traced as the origins of speech to
communicate and eventually developed into a full-fledged language in future.
There are also different types of linguistic study field. We shall first go
through the geographical linguistics. This field of linguistics study how language
in different space various form one another. Referring to the previous example of
snow in the Labradorian Inuit and in English, we can clearly know why such
variation happened. This might because of the climate that both languages
undergo are different, Labradorian Inuit are in the space that encounter with
snow all over the year, and they develop different words to describe different
types of snow. Another type of linguistics field is the Anthropological linguistics.
This linguistics studies the relationship between culture and language. For
instance, the kinship term in English and in Chinese. The kinship term of English
is rather simple comparing to Chinese. This might probably because the Chinese
are very concern and stress on the hierarchy in family, thats why how everyone
in a family is addressed is very important to them.