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Linguistics

  • Page ID
    202965
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    Linguistics is the scientific study of language and involves analyzing language form, language meaning, and language in context. Linguists traditionally analyze human language by observing an interplay between sound and meaning. Phonetics is the study of speech and non-speech sounds, and delves into their acoustic and articulatory properties. The study of language meaning, on the other hand, deals with how languages encode relations between entities, properties, and other aspects of the world to convey, process, and assign meaning, as well as manage and resolve ambiguity. While the study of semantics typically concerns itself with truth conditions, pragmatics deals with how situational context influences the production of meaning. Texts associated with specific languages are found elsewhere as are texts focusing on composition and rhetorics in English.

    Linguists find language fascinating as a descriptive power, seeing it as a mirror reflecting and being shaped by cultural, historical, age-related, and other demographic factors. Conversely, linguistic anthropologists explore language as a dynamic force that molds culture, akin to the influences of geography and politics.


    Linguistics is shared under a not declared license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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