Gjuhësia

Gjuhësia is the Albanian term for linguistics, the scientific study of language. It examines how languages are structured, how they change over time, and how they are used in social and cognitive contexts. The field aims to describe, explain, and model language patterns across diverse languages and communities, from sounds and words to meaning and use.

Core subfields include phonetics and phonology (speech sounds and their system), morphology (word formation), syntax (sentence structure), semantics (meaning), and pragmatics (language use in context). Historical or diachronic linguistics studies language change over time, while sociolinguistics investigates how language varies with social factors. Psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics explore language processing in the mind and brain. Computational and corpus linguistics apply models and large data to analyze language, and applied linguistics focuses on language teaching, translation, terminology, and language policy.

Methods in gjuhësia range from descriptive and theoretical analysis to fieldwork, experiments, and computational modeling. Researchers often work with language corpora, grip dialectal variation, and cross-linguistic comparison to identify universal patterns as well as language-specific features.

In Albanian contexts, gjuhësia includes study of the Albanian language and its dialects, such as Gheg and Tosk, alongside standardization efforts and terminology planning. The field is inherently interdisciplinary, intersecting with cognitive science, anthropology, computer science, and education. Its insights inform language teaching, lexicography, speech technology, preservation of endangered varieties, and language rights and policy.