What is linguistics, anyway? - 07/09/10 12:38 PM
Hello good FoLCs,
In my first linguistics-related post (“Why I Dislike “Ultra Woman”), I jumped right into the middle of things with a topic I thought likely to be of interest to the FoLCs on the MB.
For this post, however, I am going to start at the beginning: What, exactly, is linguistics, anyway? And what do linguists do? Before I answer those questions, I wish to dispel one misconception: Linguists are NOT, necessarily, polyglots. It is perfectly possible to be a monolingual linguist. (I think that, all else being equal, the greater the number and the more diverse the languages you have at least a passing knowledge of, the better a linguist you will be. But all else is rarely equal.)
The overarching question which linguistics tries to answer is: What is it about language and about the human brain that makes it possible for children to master the basics of one or more languages before they are even capable of tying their shoelaces? Think about it – If you have ever tried to learn a foreign language in high school or in college, you know what a monumental achievement such mastery is. And statistically speaking, most children have the basics of at least two entirely different languages before they are even three years old. (Monolinguals are in the minority worldwide.) These kids not only have to figure out everything about languages -- both about language in general and about their particular language(s) -- which they do not innately know; they must realize that they are dealing with two or more different languages, they must learn the vocabulary and sentence structure of each, and they must determine under what circumstances which language should be used. IMHO, that will be the most impressive achievement they will make in their entire lifetime, no matter what else they go on to do! And, barring extenuating circumstances such as extreme disabilities or abusive isolation, *all* children succeed at the task of learning the language(s) to which they are regularly exposed growing up.
The field of linguistics has a few core areas and a number of peripheral ones. The core areas are:
- Phonetics and phonology – These related sub-fields deal with the sounds of a language. The former is concerned with how the sounds are made (articulatory phonetics) and their physical properties (acoustic phonetics); the latter with the mental representations of the sounds. More about the distinction in another post.
- Morphology, as discussed in the last post, is the study of morphemes. It is concerned with how words are assembled from smaller, meaningful parts.
- Syntax, considered by many to be the heart of linguistics, is concerned with how sentences are assembled.
- Semantics, sometimes excluded from being considered part of the core of linguistics, is the study of meaning.
These subfields of linguistics are often studied in isolation; however, there are strong interfaces among them. One may speak, for example, of morphosyntax or morphonology.
Other subfields are considered more peripheral to linguistics. They include, but are by no means limited to:
- Historical linguistics: How and why languages change over time.
- Language acquisition: How people acquire first, second, and foreign languages.
- Psycholinguistics: How the brain functionally processes language.
- Neurolinguistics: How the brain physically processes language.
- Sociolinguistics (my favourite sub-field): How language is used in society.
- Computational linguistics: Programming computers to process human language. This sub-field has come a surprisingly loooong way over the past few decades, but there is a *lot* more progress that will need to be made before we get to the Enterprise’s natural language interface. I’ll admit, we are a lot closer to being there than I would have thought, as recently as a decade ago, we would be in the course of my lifetime.
I would like to end this discussion of the sub-fields of linguistics by relating a story that is told about the difficulties of natural language translation. I have heard many variants of it and I suspect it is an urban legend, but the point of it holds up even if the events related never actually happened. Back at the height of the Cold War, so the story goes, the US Department of Defense wanted to have a computer be able to translate between English and Russian; the strategic value of such a program would be tremendous. The computer scientists of the day, naïve to the complexities of human language, thought it would be the perfect task for a computer. All they would need to do would be to develop a comprehensive list of English/Russian word pairs. The translation would then be a simple matter of looking up the word in one language and substituting its counterpart in the other language. (I imagine that at this point in the story, all of the non-monolingual FoLCs who are reading this are shaking their heads in bemusement…) Well, according to the story, such a list of word pairs was developed, and the great day arrived when the program would be tested. The sample sentence, to be fed into the computer for translation into Russian and then back into English, was “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” The end result, after the double translation, came back as, “The wine is agreeable, but the meat is decrepit.” (I’ve also seen the punch line being “The Vodka is agreeable, but the meat is rotten.”) As I said, I make no claims as to the veracity of the story, but it does illustrate nicely that language translation is a lot more complex than the naïve monolingual would think.
My tentative plans for subsequent threads are (not necessarily in this order):
- What are lects? Just what is the difference between a dialect and a language, anyway?
- Myths about signed languages, and what, precisely makes a communication system a language?
- A thread on each of the core subfields of linguistics and on at least some of the more peripheral subfields.
And I’ll end this post with an anecdote that was making the rounds when I was in grad school:
When I knew everything there was to know about my field, they gave me my bachelors’ degree. When I realized that I didn’t know ANYTHING about my field, they gave me my masters’ degree. When I realized that THEY didn’t know anything about the field either, they gave me my doctorate.
That was certainly my experience in the field of linguistics. (I suspect it is true in other fields, as well, but I can’t speak to that from first-hand experience.) The point being that, although I will for pedagogical purposes be presenting information about language as if it were cut-and-dried, language in real life is nowhere near so straightforward – as was already seen by the whole “ultra-“ discussion in the previous thread. Linguists try to present linguistics as a science; but it is at best a soft science, with all the “fuzziness” inherent therein. (Note: There are definitely linguists who would disagree with that last statement.)
Joy,
Lynn
In my first linguistics-related post (“Why I Dislike “Ultra Woman”), I jumped right into the middle of things with a topic I thought likely to be of interest to the FoLCs on the MB.
For this post, however, I am going to start at the beginning: What, exactly, is linguistics, anyway? And what do linguists do? Before I answer those questions, I wish to dispel one misconception: Linguists are NOT, necessarily, polyglots. It is perfectly possible to be a monolingual linguist. (I think that, all else being equal, the greater the number and the more diverse the languages you have at least a passing knowledge of, the better a linguist you will be. But all else is rarely equal.)
The overarching question which linguistics tries to answer is: What is it about language and about the human brain that makes it possible for children to master the basics of one or more languages before they are even capable of tying their shoelaces? Think about it – If you have ever tried to learn a foreign language in high school or in college, you know what a monumental achievement such mastery is. And statistically speaking, most children have the basics of at least two entirely different languages before they are even three years old. (Monolinguals are in the minority worldwide.) These kids not only have to figure out everything about languages -- both about language in general and about their particular language(s) -- which they do not innately know; they must realize that they are dealing with two or more different languages, they must learn the vocabulary and sentence structure of each, and they must determine under what circumstances which language should be used. IMHO, that will be the most impressive achievement they will make in their entire lifetime, no matter what else they go on to do! And, barring extenuating circumstances such as extreme disabilities or abusive isolation, *all* children succeed at the task of learning the language(s) to which they are regularly exposed growing up.
The field of linguistics has a few core areas and a number of peripheral ones. The core areas are:
- Phonetics and phonology – These related sub-fields deal with the sounds of a language. The former is concerned with how the sounds are made (articulatory phonetics) and their physical properties (acoustic phonetics); the latter with the mental representations of the sounds. More about the distinction in another post.
- Morphology, as discussed in the last post, is the study of morphemes. It is concerned with how words are assembled from smaller, meaningful parts.
- Syntax, considered by many to be the heart of linguistics, is concerned with how sentences are assembled.
- Semantics, sometimes excluded from being considered part of the core of linguistics, is the study of meaning.
These subfields of linguistics are often studied in isolation; however, there are strong interfaces among them. One may speak, for example, of morphosyntax or morphonology.
Other subfields are considered more peripheral to linguistics. They include, but are by no means limited to:
- Historical linguistics: How and why languages change over time.
- Language acquisition: How people acquire first, second, and foreign languages.
- Psycholinguistics: How the brain functionally processes language.
- Neurolinguistics: How the brain physically processes language.
- Sociolinguistics (my favourite sub-field): How language is used in society.
- Computational linguistics: Programming computers to process human language. This sub-field has come a surprisingly loooong way over the past few decades, but there is a *lot* more progress that will need to be made before we get to the Enterprise’s natural language interface. I’ll admit, we are a lot closer to being there than I would have thought, as recently as a decade ago, we would be in the course of my lifetime.
I would like to end this discussion of the sub-fields of linguistics by relating a story that is told about the difficulties of natural language translation. I have heard many variants of it and I suspect it is an urban legend, but the point of it holds up even if the events related never actually happened. Back at the height of the Cold War, so the story goes, the US Department of Defense wanted to have a computer be able to translate between English and Russian; the strategic value of such a program would be tremendous. The computer scientists of the day, naïve to the complexities of human language, thought it would be the perfect task for a computer. All they would need to do would be to develop a comprehensive list of English/Russian word pairs. The translation would then be a simple matter of looking up the word in one language and substituting its counterpart in the other language. (I imagine that at this point in the story, all of the non-monolingual FoLCs who are reading this are shaking their heads in bemusement…) Well, according to the story, such a list of word pairs was developed, and the great day arrived when the program would be tested. The sample sentence, to be fed into the computer for translation into Russian and then back into English, was “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” The end result, after the double translation, came back as, “The wine is agreeable, but the meat is decrepit.” (I’ve also seen the punch line being “The Vodka is agreeable, but the meat is rotten.”) As I said, I make no claims as to the veracity of the story, but it does illustrate nicely that language translation is a lot more complex than the naïve monolingual would think.
My tentative plans for subsequent threads are (not necessarily in this order):
- What are lects? Just what is the difference between a dialect and a language, anyway?
- Myths about signed languages, and what, precisely makes a communication system a language?
- A thread on each of the core subfields of linguistics and on at least some of the more peripheral subfields.
And I’ll end this post with an anecdote that was making the rounds when I was in grad school:
When I knew everything there was to know about my field, they gave me my bachelors’ degree. When I realized that I didn’t know ANYTHING about my field, they gave me my masters’ degree. When I realized that THEY didn’t know anything about the field either, they gave me my doctorate.
That was certainly my experience in the field of linguistics. (I suspect it is true in other fields, as well, but I can’t speak to that from first-hand experience.) The point being that, although I will for pedagogical purposes be presenting information about language as if it were cut-and-dried, language in real life is nowhere near so straightforward – as was already seen by the whole “ultra-“ discussion in the previous thread. Linguists try to present linguistics as a science; but it is at best a soft science, with all the “fuzziness” inherent therein. (Note: There are definitely linguists who would disagree with that last statement.)
Joy,
Lynn