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Encyclopedia > Linguistics basic topics

These should be the most basic topics in the field--topics about which we'd like to have articles soon. Please see the most basic encyclopedia article topics for general instructions on constructing this list, and consult complete list of encyclopedia topics.

Contents

Basic questions

What are the basic questions asked in linguistics?

  1. What is language?
  2. How did it/does it evolve?
  3. How does language serve as a medium of communication?
  4. How does language serve as a medium of thinking?
  5. What is common to all languages?
  6. How do languages differ?

(The answers are not necessarily basic or easy to understand.)


Basic concepts (glossary of basic terms)

What basic concepts / terms do I have to know to talk about linguistics?

Timeline of discovery of basic concepts

When were the basic concepts first described and by whom?

  • Ancient Sanskrit grammarians
  • Ancient Greek study of language
  • Roman elaborations of Greek study
  • Medieval philosophical work in Latin
  • Beginnings of modern linguistics in the 19th century
  • Behaviorism and mental tabula rasa hypothesis
  • Chomsky and functionalism
  • Generative grammar leads to generative phonology and semantics
  • Birth of Nicaraguan Sign Language
  • Alternate syntactic systems develop in 80s
  • Computational linguistics becomes feasible the late 80s
  • Neurolinguistics and the biological basis of cognition
  • Controversy over Pirahã number conception

People

People who had a significant influence on the development of the field

Subfields

Schools/Movements/Approaches


  Results from FactBites:
 
Linguistics - Wikipedia (1098 words)
Linguistics studies all aspects of language and includes such diverse subfields as phonetics, semantics, syntax, etymology, lexicology, lexicography, theoretical linguistics, and historical-comparative linguistics.
Theoretical linguistics studies diverse questions: how certain languages managed to communicate, what properties all languages have in common, what knowledge a person must have to be able to use a language, and how children acquire language.
Linguists generally see language as having several layers, and assume that all natural languages have the same number of layers.
  More results at FactBites »


 

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