Wednesday, October 16, 2013
In studying
languages such as English and Arabic, Linguist have developed two
different ways of classifying languages and studying their
linguistics development over time. The traditional method, the
genetic system of classification, involves grouping languages into
language families and constructing family trees. English, For
instance, is a member of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European
language family. As a Germanic language, English originated around AD
400 and went through five successive stages, beginning with old
English and culminating in contemporary English, the language of the
moment. Linguist are also interested in studying not only how
languages change but also why they change. While linguist disagree
about whether language change has an evolutionary basis, there is
wider agreement on other motivations for language change.
In studying
languages, linguistics has a related disciplines, such as:
anthropology, philosophy, psychology. Therefore, linguistics can’t
be stand-alone itself, because science is never static, linguistics
become rich with the other supporting knowledge. Let’s we explain
one by one the related disciplines of linguistics, that is:
1. Anthropology.
Anthropology
linguistics is studying languages that spread in the ethnics all over
the world. Language has important position to study the culture of
society. Through language, the civilization can be transferred
generation by generation. Anthropology linguistics is studying
language histories, kind of languages, include: structure,
alteration, variety, and spreading the language in the world.
2. Philosophy.
3. Psychology.
Psycholinguistics is
annexation both psychology and linguistics. It is studying human
being can get, use, and understand language through psychology. At
first, it more understood through philosophy, because there is
limited an understanding about the brain working. Psycholinguistics
is language behavior that had been caused by interaction with the
thought manner of human being.
- Sound System (phonetics & phonology)
The study of sound can be focused on either individual
segments (phonemes) or supra segmental (features such as stress or
pitch covering segments larger than phonemes). Like all languages,
English has a distinctive set of speech segments called phonemes:
consonants and vowels that make up the inventory of sounds in
English. It is possible to determine which sounds in English are
distinctive by examining minimal pairs: words that differ by a single
phoneme. All English phonemes can be described in terms of their
place of articulation – where the tongue and lips are positioned
when a sound is articulated – and manner of articulation: where the
air flows in the oral or nasal cavities and the degree to which the
airstream is obstructed or allowed to flow freely. Phonemes can also
be voiced or unvoiced, depending upon whether the vocal cords vibrate
or not.
The
study of sound. However, is also supra segmental: is extends beyond
single phonemes to syllables words, phrases, and clauses. All words
in English contain one or more syllables, and of these syllables will
carry the primary stress. Intonation also serves to segment speech
into grammatical structures, though the correspondence between
grammar and intonation is closer in more carefully prepared speech
than in spontaneous dialogues6.
1
Al-baqarah: 164
2
Al Furqaan: 61
3
Al-baqarah: 29
4
Ali imron: 190
5
Al-baqarah: 30
