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