What is linguistics?

Since September, I have been studying Applied Linguistics at North Cotes College. Many of you may be aware of that, but really have no clue what linguistics really is. The reason I know that is that I myself sometimes have no clue what I am doing here… ;-)

So let me try to briefly explain linguistics as best as I can. Simply put, linguistics is the scientific study of a language. This is what would be necessary for learning an unwritten language and creating an alphabet for such a language. Among other things, linguistics involves the study of sounds (phonetics), sound systems (phonemics/phonology), structures of words (morphology), structures of sentences (syntax) and meanings (semantics).

We started in September with phonology and then moved on to advanced phonology in October where we studied such fascinating (or not!) subjects such as archiphonemes, portmanteau, bi-directional partial fusion and displaced contrast. Please don’t ask me to explain any of these – I just about made it through those by the skin of my teeth! ;-)

Now we are studying grammar (morphology) where we are making lovely little charts and “tagmemic formulas” such as this:

N = +	NUC	nrt	±	MAR	dual compl redup	±	MAR	pl high tone
	It			Dual	#1		Pl	#1

I wonder how much more fun this can get...



See below for some more photos from my class and from my work ...

... and let me know if you spot some mistakes. :-)