lingwistyce

Lingwistyka, the Polish term for linguistics, is the scientific study of language. It investigates the properties of language as a system of signs and sounds, how words and sentence structures convey meaning, and how language varies across communities and over time. The field ranges from theoretical descriptions of form to practical analysis of real-world language use.

Subfields include phonetics and phonology (the sounds of language), morphology (the structure of words), syntax (the rules governing sentence structure), and semantics and pragmatics (meaning and use in context); sociolinguistics studies language in social contexts; psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics examine language processing in the mind and brain; historical or diachronic linguistics studies language change; typology compares structural features across languages; and computational linguistics applies algorithms to language data and natural language processing.

Research methods combine descriptive analysis, fieldwork, corpus linguistics, experiments, and computational modeling. Theoretical orientations have included structuralism, generative grammar, functional and cognitive approaches, and usage-based perspectives.

Applications extend to language documentation and revitalization, language education and policy, speech pathology, translation, and the development of natural language processing tools and language technologies. In Poland, lingwistyka is a standard university discipline taught at faculties of humanities and social sciences, often within linguistics departments alongside area studies.