Subsidiary Area in Linguistics
How do human languages compare with other communication systems? What concepts
are best able to describe and account for systematic distinctions at different levels of
analysis?
How can we account for the universal human predisposition to language? By what stages
do we all move from this innate potentiality for language in general to speaking a specific
language in particular? What are the mental factors that come into play to permit or
hinder language use?
Is language use in real-life situations systematic? If so, what are the patterns that emerge?
What does language use tell us about the societies that individual users of language live
in?
Linguistics is all about asking these and related questions, and trying to answer them with
the greatest degree of objectivity and systematicity possible.
Nobody knows for certain just how many languages are currently spoken all over the
world. Estimates vary widely, ranging all the way from 5,000 to 10,000, depending on
your source and point of view. However, many languages there may be, what we can say
for certain is that each and every one is of interest to the linguist, who explores the
nature and structure of language by carefully noting both the similarities and the
differences that exist among the very diverse languages of the world. In much the same
way that botanists look upon the large variety of plants in existence as the raw material
for examination and classification, linguists use the diversity of languages of the world as
the raw material for their own investigations.
We are all native speakers of at least one language. By the same token, we are all
"language experts", in the sense that we are in possession of a great deal of knowledge
about what is and is not linguistically permissible in our native tongue, even if we do not
know that we know! One of the first skills budding linguists have to acquire is an explicit
awareness of their knowledge of their own particular language, as well as a knowledge of
other languages. Linguists who know more than one language are only at an advantage in
that they have more ready data for investigative purposes at their disposal.
The main aim of the option in Linguistics is to provide students with an understanding of
the way language works, as well as with a coherent framework of concepts and
terminology for describing it. A wide range of linguistic phenomena from different
languages are used as data and in illustration. These phenomena are taken both from
languages we are familiar with in the local context, such as Maltese, English and Italian,
and from relatively unfamiliar languages like Aztec, Czech, West Greenlandic and
Vietnamese, to pick a few random examples
Linguistic analyses of language can be carried out at various levels, the most important of
which are the following:
Phonetics and Phonology, which analyse the sound structure of language;
Morphology, which deals with the formation of words;
Syntax, which is concerned with the structure of phrases and sentences;
Semantics, which examines the meaning of words, phrases and sentences independently
of context; and
Pragmatics, which looks at the meanings and patterns of use of utterances,
contextualised language.
Given the fact that language is such a fundamental aspect of human behaviour, it is only
to be expected that Linguistics should also have links to other areas of study. For
example, one can also take a historical view of languages and their development
(Historical Linguistics), or try to describe and analyse the relationship between language
and society (Sociolinguistics), or investigate individuals' acquisition of language and the
mental phenomena surrounding language use (Psycholinguistics). Other areas of interest
are Applied Linguistics, the various strands of which include the application of linguistic
research to the teaching of languages. Two relatively new but extremely productive
disciplines are those of Computational Linguistics and Corpus Linguistics, which
harness the computer's ever-increasing processing power and capacity
for data storage.
Further details http://www.um.edu.mt/ling