What is Linguistics? | Definition and Branches of Linguistics: Linguistics is the scientific study of language, specifically language form, language meaning, and language in context. Linguistics is that particular science which studies the origin, organization, nature and development of language descriptively, historically, comparatively, explicitly and formulates the general rules related to language. Now, let’s discuss some of the branches of linguistics. General linguistics is a study of the phenomena, historical changes, and functions of language without restriction to a particular language or to a particular aspect of language such as phonetics, grammar and stylistics. Descriptive linguistics is the work of objectively analyzing and describing how language is actually used (or how it was used in the past) by a group of people in a speech community. It deals with a particular language in a specific time and in a specific community. Diachronic linguistics is also called historical linguistics. It is the scientific study of language change over time. It studies language change, history of words, history of speech communities and develops general theories about how and why language changes. Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. It compares two languages and establishes relationships between them. This comparison is generally done between the languages which are related to each other. Theoretical linguistics studies language to construct theories of their structure and functions. It is not concerned with practical applications. Applied linguistics studies language to apply the concepts and findings of linguistics to practical tasks including English language teaching. It covers both general and descriptive linguistics. Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or sign, their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory perception, and NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL STATUS. Phonology, on the other hand, is concerned with the abstract and grammatical characterization of systems of sounds or signs. It has traditionally focused largely on the study of the systems of phonemes in particular languages (and therefore used to be also called PHONEMICS or PHONEMATICS. MORPHOLOGY is the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language. It analyzes the structure of words and parts of words, such as stems, root words, prefixes, and suffixes. ...........................................................................

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