Linguistics: A Short Introduction To The Beating Heart Of Human Communications

The study of linguistics incorporates a number of aspects which are very closely related, yet distinctive from one another. Some of the aspects we explore most often include phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics:

• Phonetics is the science concerned with the study of speech processes, including the production, perception and the analysis of sounds. It is closely connected to phonology.
• Phonology is the study of the sound system of a language or languages.
• Morphology is a branch of biology which concerns the form and structure or organisms this definition includes the form and structure of words within a language, and their modification.
• Syntax is the branch of linguistics that covers the grammatical arrangements of words within sentences, and how we use speech in communication.
• Semantics deals with the study of meaning how we combine words to create meaningful discourse. It studies the relationship between signs and symbols and what they represent. It is also used in logic as the principles that determine truth-values of formulas within a logical system.
• Pragmatics (as applied to linguistics) is about how we actually use speech in communication, and how context aids the transmission of meaning in utterances.

These aspects of linguistics are listed in their hierarchical order, with phonetics and phonology being the most basic, and rising to pragmatics at the top. It can sometimes be difficult to differentiate between these sub-fields as they are so closely related to one another.