What does linguistics include?

1. What can we know about the category of linguistics?

Linguistics is a general term for all disciplines of language research, and there are many branches within it, so the content of linguistics is very rich and colorful. This is mainly because the structure of language itself is very complicated, there are many kinds of languages, and language has many connections with human social life. People study languages with various purposes, angles and methods, thus forming various categories and schools of linguistics.

Linguistics can be classified from various angles. Regarding the classification of linguistics, we should pay attention to the following classification angles: one is the function angle, the other is the research object, and the third is the classification from the time range of the research object. General linguistics mainly classifies from the perspective of function. From the functional point of view, linguistics can be divided into two categories: theoretical linguistics and applied linguistics. Here we introduce the classification from other angles. Due to different classification angles, a language subject can be divided into different categories. For example, modern Chinese belongs to theoretical linguistics in terms of function, idiomatic linguistics in terms of object and temporal linguistics in terms of research time.

Second, what is theoretical linguistics? What categories are included?

Theoretical linguistics is the main part of linguistics and the theoretical basis of all linguistics, which includes the study of specific and individual languages and the study of comprehensive languages. According to different research objects, theoretical linguistics can be divided into two categories: general linguistics and specialized linguistics.

general linguistics

General linguistics, also known as general linguistics, takes all human languages as the research object, is an important theoretical component of linguistics, based on people's research results on various specific languages, and has a guiding role in the research of specialized linguistics, which can be said to be a comprehensive reflection and application of human language research results. The basic contents of general linguistics research include: the essence of language, the structure of language, the origin and development of language, the research methods of linguistics, and the position of linguistics in the discipline system. The nature of our course is general linguistics.

General linguistics can be subdivided into general phonetics, general lexicology, general grammar and semantics. Our course belongs to general linguistics.

Professional linguistics

Professional linguistics is also called concrete linguistics and individual linguistics. Professional linguistics provides rich materials for general linguistics. We should absorb the research results of applied general linguistics, accept the guidance of general linguistics, and promote and develop together with general linguistics. Idiom linguistics studies one or more languages. It can study specific languages, such as Chinese, which is called Chinese linguistics, and English, which is called English linguistics. We can also take several languages with kinship as the research object and analyze the characteristics of their development laws. For example, Zhuang language, Buyi language, Dai language and China local language are all kinship languages derived from Dong-Dai language, which are called Dong-Dai linguistics. English, German, Dutch, Swedish and Danish all come from Germanic languages, and the subject of studying them is called Germanic linguistics. Both ancient Chinese and modern Chinese that students have studied in junior college are specialized linguistics.

The theory of general linguistics is based on the research results of specialized linguistics, and its development level depends on the research results of specific languages. The more research on specific languages, the richer the materials, and the more conducive to the development of general linguistic theory. At present, the research on specific languages is mainly limited to some big languages in the world, and there are still many languages, such as those of some remote and backward ethnic groups, which have not been well studied, and there may even be unknown languages. Therefore, the current theory of general linguistics only reflects part of the research results of language. With the deepening and expansion of linguists' research on various languages, linguistic theory will be further developed.

3. What are diachronic linguistics and temporal linguistics?

Any language has its horizontal structure, relative stability, vertical development and history. To study analytical language, we should not only look at its contemporary state and understand its present situation, but also look at its development characteristics and find out the law of evolution. Therefore, specialized linguistics can study language from different angles, the development history of a language, and the situation of a language in a certain era. Accordingly, professional linguistics can be divided into diachronic linguistics and * * * temporal linguistics.

(1) Diachronic linguistics: Studying the history of language development and observing the historical evolution of various structural elements of a language at different stages of development means studying the history of language from a vertical perspective. What involves a language is called historical linguistics, such as historical phonetics, historical lexicology, historical grammar and so on. Historical comparative linguistics involves many languages and dialects.

(2)*** Temporal Linguistics: To study the relatively static state of language by synchronic static analysis, and to describe and analyze the state of language in a certain period and stage is to study language from a horizontal perspective. It can also be divided into descriptive linguistics and contrastive linguistics. Among them, descriptive linguistics is the most familiar one. It studies language in chronological order, and makes an objective, in-depth and detailed description and analysis of the language situation in a certain era to reflect the basic characteristics of this language. For example, modern Chinese, ancient Chinese and English grammar all belong to descriptive linguistics. It can also be divided into phonetics, lexicology, grammar, rhetoric and so on. Contrastive linguistics is a comparative study based on the description of several languages, aiming at finding out their similarities and differences. Although we don't study contrastive linguistics systematically, we should actually use the research results of contrastive linguistics to learn foreign languages, such as comparing the differences between English and Chinese in pronunciation, grammar and sentence structure. For example, English words vine and wine are the first phonemes to distinguish the meaning of words, while Chinese phoneme V does not have the function of distinguishing the meaning of W, such as "Wei, Wang, Wu, Wen and Wai". Reading w(u) as v does not affect the understanding of the meaning at all, and the listener will not care about your pronunciation here, which may be a bit strange for careful people.

Of course, the division of * * * time and duration is mainly introduced in professional linguistics, but it should be noted that it is not only professional linguistics that can make this division, and general linguistics can also be divided into * * * time linguistics and diachronic linguistics.

All kinds of linguistics mentioned above are also called micro-linguistics, because they focus on the language structure itself. Correspondingly, all categories of applied linguistics formed by multidisciplinary integration are macro linguistics.