Branches of Linguistics
Such branches of linguistics also seek to understand how humans acquire and master languages. Psycholinguists often work with child psychologists and conduct research on speech and language development to understand how humans perceive and produce language.
Here are the main branches of linguistics with examples.
- **Psycholinguistics** – Psycholinguistics is among the most popular branches of linguistics, studying the relationship between psychological processes and linguistic behavior. An example is the study of how humans perceive language and why certain words can trigger us emotionally.
- **Sociolinguistics** – This is another crucial branch that deals with the effect of different aspects of society on language. Sociolinguistics studies the interaction of languages as people from different cultures and heritage interact. An example is the emergence of different dialects of a language, such as the study of language confluence, like Hindi and English being spoken together as Hinglish.
- **Applied linguistics** – This branch involves the practical use of linguistics to solve real-life problems. Linguists make use of other fields such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc., to better understand how to apply their study of linguistics to help people and solve real-world concerns. Applied linguistics can be seen in speech therapy, translating texts from different cultures or ages, and even in the process of second-language acquisition.
- **Computational linguistics** – This is a relatively new branch dealing with the use of language by computers and programs. It leverages computer science to analyze, model, and produce speech. An example is the AI-driven Google Assistant which uses natural language processing and speech recognition systems.
- **Comparative linguistics** – This branch is associated with identifying similarities and differences between languages that have a common origin. For instance, romance languages like Italian, French, and Spanish differ in speech and construction despite originating from Vulgar Latin.
- **Historical linguistics** – This branch studies the evolution of languages over time and analyzes the changes that took place within them. It examines ‘dead’ languages like Latin, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, etc., and the emergence of current languages from them.
- **Stylistics** This branch is the study and interpretation of style and rhetoric as employed by different authors within a language. It includes the analysis of symbolism, rhyme and rhythm, dialogues, sentence structures, etc. For example, the language used in politics and advertising is very different from that of religious texts and classical literature, and the analysis of that comes within the domain of stylistics.
Some Other Branches of Linguistics
While it is important to know about the major branches of linguistics, along with examples, it is equally necessary to learn the different subfields dealing with the utterance of physical sounds, word order, and meaning construction. Here are a few more structural branches of linguistics:
- **Phonetics** – The scientific study of speech sounds investigating how humans perceive and produce sounds. Three sub-fields make up this branch, namely – articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, and perceptual phonetics.
- **Phonology** – This branch studies how different sounds come together to form the spoken words of a language. It is the systematic arrangement of sound patterns in languages and dialects.
- **Syntax** – The study of rules of word arrangement to form proper phrases and sentences. In English, the simplest form of syntax follows the ‘Subject + Verb + Object’ formula.
- **Semantics** – One of the special branches dealing with the study of meaning, reference, and truth. Semantics is related to various other fields and disciplines such as pragmatics, philosophy, and science.
- **Morphology** – The branch dealing with the study of words, their formation, and their relationship with other words within the same language. Whenever one is dealing with etymology, root words, prefixes, suffixes, and word stems, one is operating in the domain of morphology.
- **Pragmatics** – A unique branch studying how the context of spoken or written language relates to semantics or the meaning of words. Pragmatics also borrows heavily from sociolinguistics, investigating how contextual clues can alter meaning in social interactions.
