WHAT IS LINGUISTICS?
Linguistics is the study of human languages. It follows scientific approach. So it is also referred to as linguistic science. Linguistics deals with describing and explaining the nature of human languages. it treats language and the ways people use it as phenomena to be studied. Linguist is one who is expertise in linguistics. Linguist studies the general principles of language organization and language behavior.
Linguistic analysis concerns with identifying the structural units and classes of language. Linguists also attempt to describe how smaller units can be combined to form larger grammatical units such as how words can be combined to form phrases, phrases can be combined to form clauses, and so on. They also concerns what constrains the possible meanings for a sentence. Linguists use intuitions about well- formedness and meaning and mathematical models of structure such as formal language theory and model theoretic semantics.
Structure of language include morphemes, words, phrases, and grammatical classes.
Sub-fields with respect to linguistic structure are phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis.
There are many branches of linguistics including applied linguistics, computational linguistics, evolutionary linguistics, neurolinguistics, cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics.