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Linguistics: General Linguistics
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Linguistics compares languages (comparative linguistics) and explores their histories, in order to find universal properties of language and to account for its development and origins (historical linguistics). Slightly separate from general linguistics is the sub-field of phonetics, the study of how sounds are produced and perceived.
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Modern linguistics can be traced to the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure 's Course in General Linguistics. He was the first to actually define language and therefore define what linguistics is. He ... introduced the idea of language being a system or structure, which heavily influenced the field during the following years. Since the publication of Saussure's work, the primary purpose of linguistics has been to explain how languages work at one given moment of time and establish how languages work through empirical evidence. To this end, many subfields of linguistics have now been established.
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UCSD hosted this year's Western Conference on Linguistics from November 30 to December 2, 2007. The general session was Expanding the Depth and Width of Empirical Data, with special sessions on understudied languages and language acquisition. Details and abstracts of presentations can be found on the conference website.
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Theoretical (or general) linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields, such as the study of language structure (grammar) and meaning (semantics). The study of grammar encompasses morphology (formation and alteration of words) and syntax (the rules that determine the way words combine into phrases and sentences). Also a part of this field are phonology, the study of sound systems and abstract sound units, and phonetics, which is concerned with the actual properties of speech sounds (phones), non-speech sounds, and how they are produced and perceived.
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General Linguistics