Consequently, questions about language, and particularly the nature of its structure, use and development, have engaged scholars from a wide range of disciplines. Linguistics is the discipline that addressses these and other related questions directly.
Linguistics comprises different areas of specialisation:
- phonetics (the study of speech sounds)
- phonology (the study of sound systems)
- morphology (the study of the internal structure of words)
- syntax (the study of how words are combined into sentences)
- semantics (the study of meaning)
- pragmatics (the study of meaning in relation to the way language is used)
- socio-linguistics (the study of language in its social context)
- historical linguistics (the study of language change)
- universal typology (the study of language universals and differences)
- acquisition (the study of how first and second languages are learned)
- applied linguistics (the application of linguistics to language teaching and other professional activities)
