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Examples) Know

Popular Recent
19TH APRIL 2018  WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW

This post, Branches of Linguistics (with Concord:

De nitions, Explanations and Subject-

Examples), sheds light on what linguistics, Verb

as a eld of study, is. Linguistics is the Agreement (Rules and

scienti c study of language. In order to Examples)

study language at a closer level, scholars


Types of
have broken down linguistics into various
Sentences
branches for easy study. We also refer to
According
this as levels of language study.
to Structure with

Examples
This post de nes language, discusses its
nature as advanced by George Yule, it Types of
di erentiates between language and a Sentences
language and it nally looks at the various According
branches of linguistics or levels of to Function with
language study with de nitions of each Examples
and various illustrative examples.
Remember to share this all-important post The

with your friends and colleagues. Let us Adverbial

see what language is… Clause:

Types, Functions and

Examples
Table of Contents: 

1. De nitions of Language by Di erent All Parts of


Scholars Speech and
2. De nitions of Language (Contd) Their

Examples

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3. The Nature and Characteristics of Next »


Language
4. Design Features of Language – C. F.
Hockett
5. Distinction between Language and a
Language
6. Levels of Language Study
7. Branches of Linguistics (with
De nitions, Explanations and Examples)
8. Psycholinguistics
9. Semantics
9.1. Synonym
9.2. Paronym
9.3. Antonyms
9.3.1. Complementary pairs
9.3.2. Gradable pairs
9.3.3. Relational opposites
9.4. Homonyms
9.5. Homophones
9.6. Homographs
10. Pragmatics
11. Semiotics
11.1. Peirce’s Categorisation of Signs
11.2. Icon
11.3. Index
11.4. Symbol
12. Grammar
13. Morphology
14. Syntax
15. Sociolinguistics
16. Discourse Analysis
17.  Stylistics
18. Phonology

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19. Phonetics
20. Conclusion

De nitions of Language by
Di erent Scholars
Various de nitions have been given by
di erent scholars on what language is. We
shall examine some of these de nitions:

Henry Sweet submits that “Language is


the expression of ideas by means of
speech-sounds combined into words.
Words are combined into sentences, this
combination answering to that of ideas
into thoughts.” The American linguists
Bernard Bloch and George L. Trager de ne
language thus: “A language is a system of
arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which
a social group cooperates.” John Milton
opines that language is the instrument
conveying to us things useful to be
known.”

Samuel Johnson, in the preface to his


dictionary, asserts that language is “the
instrument of science [knowledge]” and
words are “the signs of ideas.” In his Life of
Cowley, Johnson called language “the
dress of thought.” Yet, while language can
obviously be used to express thoughts, it
can do more than that. Merriam-Webster
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de nes language as “a systematic means


of communicating ideas or feelings by the
use of conventionalized signs, sounds,
gestures, or marks having understood
meanings.” Oxford Dictionary de nes
language as “the method of human
communication, either spoken or written,
consisting of the use of words in a
structured and conventional way; a system
of communication used by a particular
country or community.”

De nitions of Language
(Contd)
Wikipedia says this: “Language is a system
that consists of the development,
acquisition, maintenance and use of
complex systems of communication,
particularly the human ability to do so; and
a language is any speci c example of such
a system.” Robinson’s de nition of
language says “Man’s ability to make noise
with the open organ and marks in papers
or some other materials by means of
which groups of people speaking the same
language are able to interact and
cooperate as a whole.” Wale Osisanwo
sees language as “Human vocal noise or
the arbitrary graphic representation of
this noise used systematically and
conventionally by members if speech

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community for the purpose of


communication. A. C. Gimson submits that
language is “A system of conventional
signals used for communication by a whole
community.” He stresses that the pattern
of convention covers a system of
signi cant sound units otherwise called
phonemes; the in ection and arrangement
of words called grammar and the
association of meaning with words, that is,
semantics. What can be gathered from all
these de nitions is that language is: “A
system of arbitrary symbols that are
conventionally structured by members of a
speech community where a particular
language is used. In other word, a
language is a system of signs (e.g.
gestures, vocal sounds or written symbols)
that encodes information.”

Let us proceed to see the nature,


characteristics or featured of language…

The Nature and


Characteristics of
Language

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The characteristics of language discussed


below are sometimes called the “design
features” of Language. These features
include the following:

Mode of acquisition – Language is


acquired by learning
It is conventional
It is systematic; that is, it possesses
structure.
Language is systematic, structured,
patterned – it has rules and principles.
We use language in the process of
interaction: it is a unique attribute of
man (it is exclusively human), it is
human-specie speci c.
Language makes use of arbitrary
symbols: language is a matter of
personal opinion. It is arbitrary. There is
no connection or relationship between
the signi ed (object) and the signi er
(symbol)
Semanticity – language is meaningful
because words have meanings.

Design Features of
Language – C. F. Hockett
Tecumseh Fitch, in his paper, Unity and
diversity in human language, highlights C.
F. Hockett’s 16 design features of
language which the latter presented in his

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paper titled, Logical considerations in the


study of animal communication. Some
features in the list are similar to the ones
we discussed above. Let us see each of
Hockett’s features:

Vocal-auditory channel—signal
modality involves vocalization and
sound perception.
Broadcast transmission—everyone in
earshot can hear what is said.
Rapid fading—signals fade quickly, and
do not ‘clog the airwaves’.
Interchangeability—any speaker can
also be a listener and vice versa.
Total feedback—speakers can hear
everything that they say.
Specialisation (speech as ‘trigger’)—
linguistic signals accomplish their
results not via raw energy (as in pushing
or biting) but by their t to the
receiver’s perceptual and cognitive
systems.
Semanticity—some linguistic units
have speci c meanings (words or
morphemes).
Arbitrariness—meanings are generally
arbitrarily related to signals, rather than
iconic.
Discreteness—each utterance di ers
from all others discretely (by at least a
distinctive feature).

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Displacement—meanings about past,


future or distant referents can be
encoded and understood.
Productivity/openness—new
utterances can be readily coined and
understood.
Duality of patterning—meaningless
units (phonemes) are combined into
meaningful ones (morphemes), which
can then be combined into larger
meaningful units (sentences).
traditional (cultural) transmission—
languages are learned, not genetically
encoded
Prevarication—it is possible to lie.
Re exivity—it is possible to use
language to talk about language.
Learnability—it is possible for a
speaker of one language to learn
additional languages.

Distinction between
Language and a Language
You may wonder if there is any distinction
at all; but there is! Language is a general
notion, an abstract concept in the mind
and a universal phenomenon. A language,
on its own part, is a speci c instance or
manifestation of the phenomenon known
as language.

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Levels of Language Study


Language, as a very complex phenomenon,
has been broken down into more
manageable components for easy study.
We can see these components from three
(3) broad categorisations: Phonology,
Grammar and Semantics. Embedded in
these 3 major categorisations of the level
of language study are the forms and
functions of language. Under phonology,
we study phonetics and other speech-
related disciplines; under grammar, we
consider syntax, morphology and other
related elds while under semantics, we
deal with meaning of utterances in their
various shades. Lexical relations
(antonymy, synonymy, hyponymy, etc.)
come under semantics. Other concepts
such as intentional meaning, conventional
meaning, connotation, denotation, etc. all
come under semantic. In addition, applied
linguistics falls into this category also. Let
us see each of these branches of
linguistics or levels of language study as
shown below:

Branches of Linguistics
(with De nitions,

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Explanations and
Examples)

Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics, one of the branches of
linguistics, as a branch of cognitive
science, investigates how we acquire
language, how we produce language and
how we acquire language. In other words,
Psycholinguistics examines language
acquisition, language production and
language comprehension. It is the study
mental aspects of language and speech. It
looks critically into how we represent and
process language in the brain.

Alan Garnham, in his book


Psycholinguistics: Central Topics, de nes
Psycholinguistics as “the study of the
mental mechanisms that make it possible
for people to use language. It is a scienti c
discipline whose goal is a coherent theory
of the way in which language is produced
and understood.” Psycholinguistics is a
branch of both linguistics and psychology.
The American psychologist, Jacob Robert
Kantor introduced the term
‘Psycholinguistics’ in his book, An Objective
Psychology of Grammar, published in 1936.

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The two key questions that


Psycholinguistics seeks to answer are:

What knowledge of language do we


need to use language?
What are the cognitive processes
(perception, memory, and thinking)
involved in the ordinary use of
language? (See Psychology of Language
by David Carroll)

Semantics
Semantics, one of the major branches of
linguistics, is the study of meaning. This
branch of linguistics has a lot of
de nitions as many scholars have
advanced; but basically, Semantics has to
do with the functions of signs in language.
Semantics di erentiates between two
major concepts on which meaning rests.
These are Sense and Reference.
According to linguists, sense has to do
with the how a word relates to other
words in a language while reference deals
with how a word relates to real word
concepts. In other words, the sense of a
word has to do with its linguistic
boundaries in a particular language and
the reference of a word has to do with
which concepts it refers to in the real
world. Sometimes, it is problematic to
distinguish between sense and reference
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because of the biases in languages and the


varying linguistic boundaries between
conceptual features of language. One of
the interests of Semantics is the study of
meaning in terms of words and sentence
relationships. We refer to this as lexical
relations. Some semantic relationship
between words include the following:

Synonym

(See Linguistic and Stylistic Concepts


You Should Know)

Paronym

This is a type of synonym. It has to do with


words associated with meanings which
also have great similarities in form. For
example:

A ect/e ect
Aural/oral
Ingenuous/ingenious
Access/assess
Academic/academia
Believe/belief
Imminent/Immanent

Antonyms

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Antonyms are words that have the


opposite meaning. They are words that
mean the opposite of another word. 
When we talk of oppositeness, we are
talking about logical category.  Antonyms
have 3 types:

Complementary pairs

These are antonyms in which when one


quality is present, it means the other
quality is absent. The two qualities
involved are mutually exclusive. There can
be no middle ground or an intermediate
state. For example:

male/female
single/ married
not pregnant/pregnant
o /on

Gradable pairs

These are antonyms that give room for


gradual transition between two poles. In
this case, there is a possibility of making a
comparison such as:

a little/a lot
good/bad
hot/ cold
wet/dry

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Relational opposites

For these antonyms, they share the same


semantic features but the focus or
direction are in reversion. For example:

tie/untie
buy/sell
give/receive
teacher/pupil
father/son
mother/daughter
dependent/independent

Homonyms

A homonym is a word that has the same


spelling and the same pronunciation as
another word but which has a meaning
di erent from it. In other words, a way to
identify a homonym is to look out for
words with the same spellings and same
pronunciation but which usually have
di erent meanings. (Read more on
homonyms)

Homophones

A homophone is a word that has the same


pronunciation with another word but
which has a di erent spelling and
meaning. (See Homophones in English)

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Homographs

A homograph is a word that has the same


spelling as another word but which has a
di erent meaning and a di erent
pronunciation. (See Homographs in
English)

Other lexical relations include: polysemy,


hyponymy, taxonyms, holonyms,
meronyms, gures of speech or tropes,
etc. it is important to note that we can
describe all semantic relationships in all
languages based on similarity or
contiguity.

Pragmatics
Pragmatics, which is one of the interesting
branches of linguistics, has to deal
meaning beyond the surface level; that is,
it engages meaning beyond the literal
level. Pragmatics highlights the study of
meaning in the interactional context. As
language is an instrument of interaction,
Pragmatics focuses on what implied
meanings, that is what people mean when
they make use of language. Semantics
deals with what a word means while
Pragmatics deals with what is meant by a
word. Pragmatics has more to do with

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what a speaker means by a word rather


than what the word means in itself.

This is why Pragmatics concerns the


negotiation of meaning between the
speaker and the listener. It takes into
consideration the context of utterance. In
essence, Pragmatics is the study of the
aspects of meaning and language use that
are dependent on the speaker, the
addressee and other features of the
context of utterance, such as the
following:

principles of communication
speaker’s goals
presupposition
deixis
speech acts
implicature

Without Pragmatics, it would be di cult


to understand language and responses to
it; without Pragmatics, we would not have
a holistic understanding of what people
mean and their intentions. Let us consider
this popular sentence:

‘Can you pass the salt?’

If we consider this question on the


surface, the speaker is asking the listener
if they have the ability to pass the salt
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through the use of the modal auxiliary,


‘can’ which deals with ability. But the
pragmatic import of this interrogative
sentence is beyond the ability to pass the
salt. It means:

‘Will you pass the salt?

So in asking the question, the speaker is


simply directing the listener to pass the
salt. This is what J. L. Austin deals with in
his seminal book, How to do Things with
Words.

Semiotics
This brach of linguistics has to do with the
study of signs and sign-using behaviour.
One of its founders, Ferdinand de
Saussure, de nes it as the study of ‘the
life of signs within society’. Another major
proponent of Semiotics is Charles Sanders
Peirce. Peirce de nes a sign as “something
which stands to somebody for something”.
He believes that a sign can never have a
xed meaning because we have to
constantly qualify what meaning means.
(See the Meaning of meaning).

Peirce’s Categorisation of Signs

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Peirce categorises signs into 3 major


types. These are:

Icon

An icon is that which looks almost exactly


(if not exactly) like what is refers to. It is a
picture or symbol which we recognise
universally to be representative of
something. It is a word or sign which
stands for something else. Examples
includes pictures in di erent forms, a road
sign for falling rocks, the Roman numeral
‘II’ representing the number two (2), etc.

Index

An index is an indicator or sign of


something. We associated an index with
its referent. For instance, smoke is a sign
of re, dark clouds are indexical of
imminent rainfall, a signpost or signboard
is pointer or an index of a particular
location.

Symbol

A symbol is something that stands for or


represents something else, especially an
object representing an abstraction or a
concept; it is a sign with a speci c
meaning: a written or printed sign or
character that represents something in a

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speci c context. Note that a symbol


relates to its referent only by convention
(this is why we say language is
conventional because there is no
relationship between the signi ed (the
concept or idea behind the sign) and the
signi er (a set of speech sounds or marks
on a page); it is a matter of convention.
Socio-cultural contexts also determine
what is symbolic and what is not. Modern
semioticians who have applied Peirce and
Saussure’s principles to a variety of elds,
such as aesthetics, anthropology,
psychoanalysis, communications,
semantics, etc. include these leading
scholars: Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques
Lacan, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida,
Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva and others.

Grammar
The discussions on branches of linguistics
will not be complete without grammar.
Grammatical level deals with the
morphology and the syntax of a language.
The traditional grammar is the earliest
form developed by Socrates, Aristotle and
Plato. They invented the Parts of Speech
and came up with de nitions, they are the
Prescriptive School. They de ned
grammar as a body of prescribed rules

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which is aimed at guiding the use of a


language. A school later came up, the
empiricist movement, which gave birth to
the Structural grammar who based their
argument on what is observed and not
what is de ned. They were averse to
prescribing and favours describing
descriptive grammar as against
prescriptive grammar.

They de ne grammar as a body of


descriptive statements about a language.
For instance, the grammar of English is a
description of its word classes: the
stringing of words together in acceptable
sequence such as phrases, clauses,
sentences, etc. Their emphasis is on form
and function of a word and not what a rule
says about the word. Consider this
sentence, for example:

The disbursements have started.

‘Disbursement’ is a noun but it is not a


place, person, animal, or thing as
prescriptive grammarians have de ned
nouns. (See the post: What is a Noun?)

Grammar is also a body of instructions that


can be studied in schools. (See What is
Grammar?) Grammar examines how words
or morphemes combine to form
meaningful sentences. It is a set of
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constraints on the possible sequences of


symbols expressed as rules or principles.
Syntax is the basic ingredient of grammar.
Grammar tells us the di erence between
sets of sentences. We can identify ve
basic units of grammatical structure.
These are: morphemes, word, phrase,
clause and sentence. There are posts
dedicated to each of these 5 aspects. See
them here:

What is a morpheme?
Parts of Speech
Phrase/Groups in English
The English Clause
The English Sentence
Types of Sentence according to Function
Types of Sentences according to Structure

Morphology
Morphology is a branch of linguistics which
deals with the study of words; precisely
the study of the internal structure of
words. The term originates from the Greek
and it deals with ‘morph’ which means
‘shape’ or ‘form’. Morphology is a branch
of linguistics that came into existence in
1859. The German linguist, August
Schleicher, rst made use of the term to
describe the study of the form of words.
Morphology deals with word formation
out of morphemes. It is the study and
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description of word formation (such as


in ection, derivation, and compounding)
in language; it is the system of word-
forming elements and processes in a
language. Morphemes are the building
blocks of morphology and they are the
smallest meaning-bearing units of
language (O’Grady, 1997). Read more in
this post on Morphemes.

Syntax
Edward J. Vajda informs us that ‘Syntax’ is
a derivative of the Greek word syntaxis,
which means arrangement.  Syntax deals
with phrase and sentence formation out of
words. Syntax is the study of the
arrangement of words in sentences,
clauses, and phrases; it is also the study of
the formation of sentences and the
relationship between their component
parts. A major concern of syntax is ‘word
order’ which is a main device for showing
the relationship among words. Usually, the
subject comes rst in a sentence; the
verbs follows and the object or
complement follows the verb. (See
Patterns of the English Sentence) and
(The Syntactic Elements of the Clause
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Structure). When the order changes, it


may a ect the meaning of the utterance.
Syntax is the grammar, structure, or order
of the elements in a language statement.
In essence, syntax is the way in which we
put linguistic elements together to form
constituents such as phrases or clauses.
We also refer to the part of grammar
dealing with this as syntax. In a sentence,
syntax tells us which word comes before
and after another word. Syntax deals with
arrangement of words to form meaningful
sentences.

Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is an interface between
sociology and linguistics or language and
the society. This accounts for the
de nition of sociolinguistics as the study
of patterns and variations in language
within a society or community.
Sociolinguistics, another branch of
linguistics, focuses on the way people use
language to express social class, group
status, gender, or ethnicity, and it looks at
how they make choices about the form of
language they use. It also examines the
way people use language to negotiate
their roles in a society and to achieve
positions of power. Sociolinguistics also
deals with the assignment of roles to
various languages that exist in a speech
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community such as First Language, O cial


Language, National Language, etc.

Discourse Analysis
This branch of linguistics is the study of
language of sentences; the analysis of
features of language that extend beyond
the limits of a sentence. A scholar
suggests that the term discourse analysis
is very ambiguous. According to him,
Discourse Analysis “refer mainly to the
linguistic analysis of naturally occurring
connected speech or written discourse.”
Explaining further, discourse analysis
“refers to attempts to study the
organisation of language above the
sentence or above the clause, and
therefore to study larger linguistic units,
such as conversational exchanges or
written texts.” Discourse Analysis takes
linguistic enquiry beyond the clause-
bound ‘objects’ of grammar and semantics
to the level of analysing ‘utterances’,
‘texts’ and ‘speech events’. It engages
itself with meaning that cannot be located
in the ‘linguistic system’. Discourse
Analysis deals with language use in social
contexts; and in particular with interaction
or dialogue between speakers.

Deborah Tannen, in explaining Discourse


analysis, de nes it as “the analysis of
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language ‘beyond the sentence’. She


submits that this analysis contrasts with
the typical analysis by modern linguistics
which mainly deals with the study of
grammar: the study of smaller bits of
language, such as sounds (phonetics and
phonology), parts of words (morphology),
meaning (semantics), and the order of
words in sentences (syntax). According to
her, “Discourse analysts study larger
chunks of language as they ow together.”
Discourse analysts examine larger
discourse context so that they ca
determine how it a ects the meaning of a
sentence. For instance, let us look at the
example of two signs/sentences at a
swimming pool given by Charles Fillmore:

Please use the toilet, not the pool.


Pool for members only.

If these two sentences are read


separately, they might seem reasonable;
but when we take them together as a
single discourse, we will have to check
again the interpretation of the rst
sentence having read the second
sentence. This is what discourse analysts
do. Rechecking the rst sentence to
properly determine its meaning is known
in Discourse Analysis as Reframing.

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 Stylistics
This is one of the most interesting
branches of linguistics that explores the
linguistic choices available to users of
language in a particular language. We
cannot talk about stylistics without talking
about style. Stylistics is the study of
textual meaning. It arose from the Russian
formalist approach to literary meaning.
Stylistics deals with style and its
consequent meaning. Stylistics is the study
of linguistic styles in a language. It is the
use of linguistic tools to arrive at the
meaning of an utterance or a text.
Stylistics explores how readers interact
with the language of (mainly literary) texts
in order to explain how we understand,
and how texts a ect us when we read
them. Stylistics is also the study of the
devices in languages (such as rhetorical
gures and syntactical patterns) that are
considered to produce expressive or
literary style. Modern stylistics makes use
of the tools of formal linguistic analysis
alongside methods of literary criticism and
the goal is to try to isolate characteristic
uses and functions of language and
rhetoric rather than advance normative or
prescriptive rules and patterns.

Phonology
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Phonology, a major branch of linguistics,


deals with sounds of a language. It is the
study of the patterns of sounds in a
language. It deals with how speech sounds
are organised and used in a language;
especially how the sounds are organised in
the mind and how they are used to convey
meaning. The phonological system of a
language has to do with two basic foci: the
inventory of sounds and their features and
the rules which govern how sounds
interact with one another. Phonology is
related to other branches of linguistics like
phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics
and pragmatics. Phonology is di erent
from phonetics. Phonetics analyses the
production or articulation of speech
sounds irrespective of the language, but
phonology analyses the sound patterns of
a particular language. Phonetics is
concerned with the physical properties of
sounds while phonology deals more with
how the sounds function in a language.
There are some other aspects to
Phonology which study speci c things.
These include: Generative Phonology,
Auto-segmental Phonology, Metrical
Phonology, Lexical Phonology, etc. The
person who specialises in Phonology is a
Phonologist.

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Phonetics
Phonetics, closely related with phonology,
is another important branch of linguistics
that studies speech sounds. It deals with
how we produce speech sounds and how
we perceive speech sounds. There are
three major aspects to the study of
phonetics: articulatory phonetics (the
exploration of how the human vocal tract
or apparatus produce speech sound, the
way the articulators or speech organs
interact together to produce sounds);
acoustic phonetics (studies the sound
waves the human vocal apparatuses
produce; it deals with the physical or
acoustic properties of speech sounds) and
auditory phonetics (this studies or
determines how the human ear perceives
speech sounds which the articulators
produce). There are other posts on this
site that focus speci cally on some of
these branches of linguistics in a more
detailed manner. You can check them out.

Conclusion
This post, Branches of Linguistics (with
De nitions, Explanations and
Examples), considers various aspects and
branches of linguistics; core linguistics and
applied linguistics alike. It focuses on what

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language is and its features and the


various levels at which we study it. Do
someone a world of good by sharing this
post with them. Many students of English
will need this post; do share it with them. I
am sure you have learned something
de nite in this post. Check out other
educative posts on Akademia. See you
around.

References

Hockett C. F. (1960). Logical considerations


in the study of animal communication. In
Animal sounds and communication (eds.
Lanyon W. E., Tavolga W. N., editors.), pp.
392–430 Washington, DC: American
Institute of Biological Sciences.

O’Grady, W., (1997). Contemporary


Linguistics: An Introduction. London:
Longman

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