linguistic

Linguistics is the scientific study of language, encompassing the structure, use, acquisition, and evolution of human speech. It seeks to describe how languages are organized, how they differ, and how they are learned and processed by speakers and listeners.

Core subfields examine different levels of linguistic structure: phonetics and phonology study sounds; morphology analyzes word formation; syntax investigates the rules for combining words into sentences; semantics concerns meaning; and pragmatics analyzes language use in context. Together these levels form a model of how language is organized.

Other areas include historical and comparative linguistics, which trace language change; sociolinguistics, which studies language variation across social groups; psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics, which explore language processing in mind and brain; and computational or corpus linguistics, which use models and data to analyze language. Data are gathered through fieldwork, experiments, corpus analysis, and neuroimaging, and are typically descriptive rather than prescriptive.

Linguistics informs many applied fields such as language teaching, translation, speech technology, forensic linguistics, and clinical assessment of communication disorders. While theories differ, the field generally emphasizes empirical evidence and the universal features of human language across diverse languages.