ESSAI FOUNDATION OF LINGUISTICS

“LINGUISTICS ”

COMPILED BY:

ZAITUN A12124166

ENGLISH EDUCATION PROGRAM STUDY

FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION

TADULAKO UNIVERSITY

2024

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 FOREWORD

We would like to express our gratitude to the presence of God Almighty for His
mercy and grace so that I can complete this paper entitled "Linguistics" well and on
time. This paper was prepared to fulfill one of the assignments in the Linguistics
course taught by Mam Happy Cruzia Rini as lecturer in the Linguistic Foundations
course in the English Language Education Study Program.

I hope this paper can provide a deeper understanding of linguistics as an important

branch of linguistics. I realize that this paper is still far from perfect. Therefore, I
really hope for constructive criticism and suggestions from various parties for
further improvement and development. Finally, I would like to thank all parties who
have helped and supported me in completing this paper, both in the form of moral
and material support. Hopefully this paper is useful for readers.

Palu, 12 September 2024

Compiler

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 LIST OF CONTENTS

Foreword ..........................................................................................................i

List of contents ...............................................................................................ii

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background ...............................................................................................4

1.2 Problem Formulation ...............................................................................4

1.3 Purpose of Writing ...................................................................................4

CHAPTER II DISCUSSION

2.1 Linguistic Definition .................................................................................5

2.2 Scope of Linguistics ................................................................................6

2.3 History of Linguistics ...............................................................................9

BAB III CLOSING

3.1 Conclusion .............................................................................................11

3.2 Suggestions ...........................................................................................11

Bibliography .................................................................................................12

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 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background

Linguistics is the scientific study of language, a field that seeks to understand how
languages are structured, how they function, and how they evolve. As one of the oldest
human endeavors, the study of linguistics has evolved from traditional philosophical
inquiries into language to a formalized and structured scientific discipline. This paper will
examine the definition, scope, and history of linguistics, providing a broad overview of this
complex and ever-developing field.

B. Formulation of the problem

1. What is linguistics?

2. What is the scope of linguistics?

3. What is the history of linguistics?

C. Objective

Know what Linguistics is Knowing what the scope of linguistics is and

To know the history of Linguistics

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 CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

LINGUISTICS DEFINITION

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Depending on a

researcher's point of view and approach, linguistics is often
subsumed into cognitive science, psychology, and anthropology.
There are three broad aspects of research, which include language
form, language meaning, and language in context. The beginning of
known activity in language description has been attributed to Pāņini
around 500 BC with his analysis of Sanskrit in Ashtadhyayi. Language
can be understood as an interaction of sound and meaning. The
discipline that studies the sounds of language is called phonetics,
which is concerned with the exact nature of speech sounds and non-
speech sounds and how they are produced and perceived. The study
of language meaning, on the other hand, is concerned with how
language uses logic and real-world references to convey, process,
and assign meaning as well as to manage and resolve ambiguity.
This in turn includes the study of semantics (meaning inferred from
words and concepts) and pragmatics (meaning inferred from
context).

There is a system of rules (known as grammar) that governs

communication between members of a particular speech community.
Grammar is influenced by sound and meaning, including morphology

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(the formation and composition of words), syntax (the formation and
composition of phrases and sentences from these words), and
phonology (the sound system). Through corpus linguistics, large
chunks of text can be analyzed for the possible occurrence of
particular linguistic forms and stylistic patterns in written or spoken
discourse.

SCOPE OF LINGUISTICS

The scope of linguistics is broad, covering various subfields that

each focus on different aspects of language.

Phonology and Phonetics:

Phonology studies the combination of sounds into organized

units of speech, the formation of syllables and larger units.
Phonetics studies language at the level of sounds. How sounds
are uttered by the human speech mechanism and
acknowledged by the acoustic mechanism, how sounds can be
differentiated and characterized by the manner in which they
are produced.

Morphology

Studies the patterns of creation of words by the combination of

sounds into negligible distinctive units of meaning called
morphemes. Words can be made up of single morphemes such
as ‘cat’ or combinations of morphemes, e.g. ‘cats’ is made up of
two morphemes: ‘cat’ + ‘s’. Morphology deals with the systems
of combination of morphemes to form words, as suffixes or

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prefixes are attached to single morphemes to form words. It
studies the changes that take place in the structure of words,
e.g. the morpheme ‘gives’ changes to ‘gave’ and ‘given’––these
changes signify a change in tense.

Syntax is the level at which we study how words combine to

form phrases, phrases combine to form clauses and clauses
join to make sentences. Syntax also tries to describe how these
elements function in the sentence, i.e. what is their role in the
sentence. For example, the word ‘boy’ is a noun. However, in
each of the following sentences, it functions in different roles:

•The GIRL likes dolls

•The old man loved the GIRL.

In sentence (a), it functions as the subject of the sentence

In sentence (b), it functions as the object.

Semantics deals with the level of meaning in language. It

attempts to analyse the structure of meaning in a language, e.g.
how words similar or different are related; it attempts to show
these inter-relationships through forming ‘categories’.

Pragmatics deals with the contextual aspects of meaning in

particular situations. As distinct from the study of sentences,
pragmatics considers utterances, i.e. those sentences that are
actually uttered by speakers of a language.

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Sociolinguistics

The branch of linguistics that deals with the exploration of the

relation between language and society is known as
sociolinguistics, and the sociology of language. Sociolinguistics
is based on the fact that language is not a single homogeneous
entity, but has different forms in different situations. The
changes in language occur because of changes in social
conditions, for example, social class, gender, regional and
cultural groups. A particular social group may speak a different
variety of a language from the rest of the community.

Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics studies these mental processes, processes

of thought and concept formation and their articulation in
language, which reveal a great deal about the structures of
human psychology as well as of language. ‘Psycholinguistics
also studies the influence of psychological factors such as
intelligence, motivation, anxiety etc. on the kind of language that
is understood and produced. Our perception of speech sounds
or graphic symbols (in writing) is influenced by the state of our
mind. One kind of mental disability, for example, results in the
mistakes made by children in reading when they mistake one
letter for another (Dyslexia). Psycholinguistics can offer some
insights and corrective measures for this condition.

Applied Linguistics:

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 Applied Linguistics is concerned with the systematic study of
language structure, the acquisition of first and subsequent
languages, the role of language in communication, and the
status of language as the product of particular cultures and
other social groups.

Applied Linguistics:

•Examines the structure of language and its role in

communication

•Explores how children acquire language

•Studies how the skills of second-language speakers develop

•Investigates how the social or cultural environment interacts

with language

History of linguistics

Language use was first systematically documented in

Mesopotamia, with extant lexical lists of the 3rd to the 2nd
Millennia BCE, offering glossaries on Sumerian cuneiform
usage and meaning, and phonetical vocabularies of foreign
languages. Later, Sanskrit would be systematically analysed,
and its rules described, by Pāṇini (fl. 6-4th century BCE), in the
Indus Valley. Beginning around the 4th century BCE, Warring
States period China also developed its own grammatical
traditions.[citation needed] Aristotle laid the foundation of
Western linguistics as part of the study of rhetoric in his Poetics
c. 335 BC. Traditions of Arabic grammar and Hebrew grammar

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developed during the Middle Ages in a religious context like
Pānini's Sanskrit grammar.

Modern approaches began to develop in the 18th century,

eventually being regarded in the 19th century as belonging to
the disciplines of psychology or biology, with such views
establishing the foundation of mainstream Anglo-American
linguistics, although in England philological approaches such as
that of Henry Sweet tended to predominate. This was contested
in the early 20th century by Ferdinand de Saussure, who
established linguistics as an autonomous discipline within
social sciences. Following Saussure's concept, general
linguistics consists of the study of language as a semiotic
system, which includes the subfields of phonology, morphology,
syntax, and semantics. Each of these subfields can be
approached either synchronically or diachronicially.

Today, linguistics encompasses a large number of scientific

approaches and has developed still more subfields, including
applied linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and
computational linguistics.

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 CHAPTER III

CLOSING

A. Conclusion

Linguistics is a vast and multifaceted field that provides

critical insights into how human languages function and evolve.
By studying the various aspects of language—from sounds and
words to meanings and communication—linguists contribute to
our understanding of one of the most fundamental aspects of
human existence. As the study of linguistics continues to
develop, it promises to shed even more light on the complex,
dynamic nature of human language.

A. Suggestion

In closing, it is recommended that linguistic research continues

to be developed, especially in new fields such as
neurolinguistics, sociolinguistics and digital linguistics, which
are increasingly relevant in this modern era. In addition, the
application of linguistics in education needs to be improved so
that we not only understand the technical aspects of language,
but also the social and cultural context behind it.
Documentation of endangered regional languages is also very

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 important to maintain linguistic diversity. By understanding
language changes in digital communication and social media,
linguistics can continue to make a significant contribution to
everyday life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Linguistics - Wikipedia" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics

"Levels and Scope of Linguistics – Introduction to Linguistics & Phonetics"

https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/engp13/chapter/levels-and-scope-of-linguistics/

"History of linguistics - Wikipedia" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics

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