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First, what is linguistics?

Linguistics is a science that takes language as the research object, or it can be said that the subject that specializes in human language is called linguistics. Study and discuss the essence, structural law and development and evolution law of language.

Generally speaking, the language courses of Chinese Department in universities include modern Chinese, ancient Chinese and an introduction to linguistics. Modern Chinese course mainly studies the language of China since the May 4th Movement. Ancient Chinese mainly studies the ancient languages of China, including ancient, medieval and modern times. Introduction to Linguistics is a highly cross-cutting course, which involves not only the contents of the above two courses, but also a lot of foreign language knowledge. The outline of general linguistics we are going to learn is an introductory course of general linguistics. This paper mainly introduces the basic theoretical knowledge about language.

Second, the classification of linguistics

Linguistic research can have different research scope and methods from different purposes, so linguistics as a discipline has different branches. The following are some common classifications.

Individual linguistics and general linguistics

From the scope of research objects, linguistics can be divided into individual linguistics and general linguistics.

Individual linguistics (concrete linguistics) refers to the study of a specific language or languages with kinship, and the comparative study of languages without kinship. The task is to describe and compare the specific language system and its characteristics, and find out its time and diachronic laws. For example, Chinese linguistics, Indo-European linguistics, Chinese-English contrastive linguistics and so on.

General linguistics takes all human languages as the research object, and probes into the universal nature and laws of human languages. The purpose of its research is to establish a general theory of linguistics. The founders are Humboldt in Germany and Saussure in Switzerland. Such as transformational generative grammar. The outline we are talking about now is an introductory course of general linguistics. Individual linguistics and general linguistics are two opposite and inseparable research fields. On the one hand, individual linguistics lays a foundation for the establishment of general linguistics and provides materials. The richer and deeper its research is, the more comprehensive and reliable its content will be. On the other hand, the basic principles of general linguistics will effectively guide people to learn specific languages.

For example, there is a rule in general linguistics that "the arrangement of language components generally has certain rules". This rule is based on the study of individual languages. For example, the arrangement of dates: Chinese is year, month and day; English is month, day and year. The arrangement of address forms: from big to small in Chinese; English grew up. East, south, west and north in Chinese also have a certain arrangement order. Generally speaking, it is southeast and northwest, not northwest, southeast and east; Say southeast corner, northeast corner, not southeast corner, but northeast corner. It can be seen from these that no matter how they are arranged, there is always a certain rule. This law of general linguistics can be used to explain or deeply study individual linguistics. Some scholars in China have discussed the order of multiple attributes, multiple adverbials and verbs in serial sentences.

Descriptive linguistics and historical linguistics

From the research methods, linguistics can be divided into descriptive linguistics and historical linguistics. Descriptive linguistics refers to the description and analysis of the specific state and characteristics of language in a specific period by means of static description. Such as modern Chinese, ancient Chinese and contemporary English. Historical linguistics mainly uses dynamic and historical methods to reveal the changes and laws of a language in different historical periods. Such as: China history, China history manuscript (Wang Li), Russian history, etc.

Descriptive linguistics and historical linguistics are also two opposite and mutually influential research fields. Historical linguistics studies the historical evolution law of language, which can provide some explanations for describing language phenomena and laws. On the other hand, descriptive linguistics provides a sufficient premise for historical linguistics. For example, in Chinese, the clutch words are: bathing, swimming, walking, sleeping, taking exams, registering, etc. From the modern tense, they are verb-object structures, but from the ancient tense, they are not all verb-object structures, such as "bathing" and "sleeping" are coordinate structures in ancient Chinese. Combining ancient and modern history, why did these words which were not verb-object structures in ancient Chinese become verb-object structures in modern Chinese? It can be considered that this is the categorization of verb-object structure. Because there are many words that drive the object structure in various structures and have strong assimilation and classification power, these words that are not verb-object structures are classified as verb-object structures. Moreover, these structures can also be used to explain language phenomena in modern Chinese. For example, the Chinese transliteration word "hummor" is just a simple word. However, we often see someone use "silence him". Some people think that this is a sentence that does not conform to grammatical norms. Whether it is not standardized depends on whether most people recognize and accept it. In fact, it is also the result of classification. Just like "bathing" and "sleeping". So * * * description and diachronic investigation are interactive.

(3) Temporal linguistics and diachronic linguistics

From the time span of research, linguistics can be divided into temporal linguistics and diachronic linguistics. Linguistics studies the situation of language in a certain period. Such as descriptive linguistics and modern Chinese-English contrastive linguistics. Diachronic linguistics studies the changes experienced by language in different periods.

Theoretical linguistics and applied linguistics

From the research point of view, it can be divided into theoretical linguistics and applied linguistics. Theoretical linguistics specializes in the general theory of human language, including the essence, structure, mechanism, variation and evolution of language. Theoretical linguistics in a narrow sense refers to general linguistics, while theoretical linguistics in a broad sense includes the theoretical parts of individual linguistics. Applied linguistics can also be divided into broad sense and narrow sense: broad sense refers to all branches of linguistics that use linguistics to solve practical problems. For example, dictionary compilation, writing, language teaching, machine translation, artificial intelligence, aphasia treatment and so on all need to apply linguistic knowledge. Applied linguistics in a narrow sense refers to the study of language teaching, that is, the application of language theory in language teaching (language acquisition psychology, etc.). ). Above, we have classified linguistics from different angles. These linguistic categories are not completely independent and often cross. The same research object can also belong to different categories. For example, modern Chinese belongs to individual linguistics, descriptive linguistics and * * * tense linguistics.