Linguistic structures are pairings of meaning and sound or other forms of externalization.

A Linguists may specialize in some subpart of the  following linguistic structure:

• Phonetics, the study of the physical aspects of sounds of human language
• Phonology, the study of patterns of a language’s sounds
• Morphology, the study of the internal structure of words
• Syntax, the study of how words combine to form grammatical sentences
• Semantics, the study of the meaning of words (lexical semantics) and fixed word combinations (phraseology), and how these combine to form the meanings of sentences
• Pragmatics, the study of how utterances are used (literally, figuratively, or otherwise) in communicative acts
• Discourse analysis, the analysis of language use in texts (spoken, written or signed)

Alternative Classification of the Linguistic Structure

• Developmental linguistics, the study of the development of linguistic ability in an individual, particularly the acquisition of language in childhood.
• Historical linguistics or Diachronic linguistics, the study of language change
• Evolutionary linguistics, the study of the origin and subsequent development of language
• Psycholinguistics, the study of the cognitive processes and representations underlying language use
• Sociolinguistics, the study of social patterns of linguistic variability
• Clinical linguistics, the application of linguistic theory to the area of Speech-Language Pathology
• Neurolinguistics, the study of the brain networks that underlie grammar and communication
• Biolinguistics, the study of natural as well as human taught communication systems in animals compared to human language
• Computational linguistics, the study of computational implementations of linguistic structures
• Applied linguistics, the study of language related issues applied in every day life, notably language policies and language education