What does linguistics include?

Linguistics includes functional linguistics (pragmatics), cognitive linguistics, applied linguistics (foreign language teaching), and translation.

Linguistics in a broad sense includes philology.

The discipline that takes human language as its object of study. The scope of exploration includes the structure of language, the use of language, the social function and historical development of language, and other issues related to language. Traditional linguistics, known as philology, focuses on the study of ancient texts and the written word. Modern linguistics, on the other hand, focuses on contemporary and spoken languages, and the scope of study has broadened considerably. Philology is in the service of other disciplines. Modern linguistics is an independent discipline. Linguistics in a broad sense includes philology. The study of language at one time is called ****temporal linguistics; the study of the changes that language undergoes at different times is called ephemeral linguistics or historical linguistics. The comprehensive study of many languages in an attempt to find out the ****same pattern is called general linguistics. The application of linguistic knowledge to practical work is called applied linguistics. To trace the kinship of certain languages through comparisons of speech sounds and word forms is called historical comparative linguistics. The discovery of certain ****similar phenomena in various human languages by means of comparative methods is called typological linguistics. To compare the similarities and differences between two languages in order to solve teaching or translation problems is called comparative linguistics.

The disciplines of phonetics, grammar, vocabulary, and script, all of which focus on the structure of language itself, are at the center of linguistics, and are called microlinguistics. Phonetics is the study of the physical properties of speech, how humans pronounce words, and the physiological processes of speech perception; phonology or phonemic phonology is the study of how many different sounds there are in a language, and how they are distinguished from and related to each other. The study of how words are formed and inflected is morphology, also called lexicography; the study of how words are formed into phrases or sentences is syntax, also called syntax. By traditional grammar, morphology and sentence building together are syntax. The study of lexical items, lexical meanings, and the evolution of words is lexicography; the tracing of the origin and history of words is etymology; and the collection of many lexical items, classifying, comparing, and annotating them is lexicography. It is semantics to study the relationship between lexical items and concepts and objects, to speculate on the similarities and differences, positive and negative, upper and lower, and intersection of the meanings of words, and to analyze the meaning of the whole sentence or some of its constituents. The study of the shape, system, origin, evolution and development of writing is philology.

Language is actually part of the ecosystem. Like many species in nature, it decreases in variety from the equator to the poles. Languages are less diverse the higher the latitude. For example, New Guinea: about 860 languages. Indonesia: about 670 languages. India: about 380 species. Europe: about 230 languages. China: about 80 languages. Japan 2 species. Korea 1 species.

Language teaching is the driving force behind the study of language and the place where language theory comes into play. Language teaching is divided into first language teaching, second language teaching and foreign language teaching. In first language teaching, what is taught is the mother tongue. Second language teaching takes place in bilingual societies, where both the mother tongue and another language are taught. In foreign language instruction, students are taught a foreign language. Translation requires that the content of a work originally written in one language be expressed in another. Using the same national language, the phonetics, vocabulary, and grammatical format vary from region to region, from the social status of the speakers, and also from occasion to occasion and purpose of use. The study of these issues is sociolinguistics. Closely related to sociolinguistics is dialectology. The study of regional dialects is called dialect geography. Stylistics is close to sociolinguistics and studies stylistic differences in language use under different conditions. Stylistics studies how different styles of writing are created. A traditional discipline that approximates this is rhetoric, including eloquence and composition. Stylistics can be described as modern rhetoric. Psycholinguistics studies the psyche in terms of language, mapping the relationship between language and the psychological effects of perception, attention, memory, and learning. Neurolinguistics explores the neurological basis of people's learning and use of language and tries to make a simulation of the human brain's control of speech and hearing. The study of the phenomena that accompany language communication is called paralinguistics, or concomitant linguistics. Anthropological linguistics studies the influence of social institutions, religious beliefs, occupations, kinship, etc., on linguistic habits and the influence of language on these things to a greater or lesser extent. Ethnolinguistics studies only the relationship between ethnic types, ethnic behavioral programs, and people's language. Mathematical linguistics is the study of the nature of mathematics in language. The study of language using mathematical methods began with the counting of items such as phonemes, morphemes, and vocabulary, and later people applied quantitative calculus and used a variety of models to deal with linguistic material. Mathematical linguistics now includes algebraic linguistics, statistical linguistics, and applied mathematical linguistics. Computational linguistics illustrates how computers can be used to conduct linguistic research, with projects such as statistics, searching for information, studying lexicon and syntax, recognizing words, synthesizing speech, developing machine-assisted teaching programs, and machine-assisted translation.