Linguistics: Language Form, Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics

LINGUISTICS
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language en context.

LANGUAGE FORM
The first is the study of language structure, or grammar. This focuses on the system of rules followed by the speakers (or hearers) of a language. It encompasses morphology ( the formation and composition of words), syntax ( the formation and composition of phrases and sentences from these words), and phonology ( sound systems). Phonetics is a related branch of linguistics concerned with the actual properties of speech sound and nonspeech sounds, and how they are produced and perceived.


PHONETICS:
Phonetics is one of the branches of linguistics. It is concerned with describing the physical properties and production of speech sounds that occur in languages of the world. When we speak, it is usually one continuous string of sounds
We can identify speech sounds when we divide a string of sounds into bits known as segments, hence sound segments. For example, as a speaker of English, you know that the word ‘cap’ has three segments ‘c’, ‘a’, and ‘p’. When each sound is substituted with another in a frame such as in a word, it cause a change in meaning. For example, ‘cap’ becomes ‘sap’ when ‘c’ is replaced with ‘s’; ‘cap’ becomes ‘cup’ when ‘a’ is replaced with ‘u’; and ‘cap’ becomes ‘cab’ when ‘p’ is replaced with ‘b’. The words ‘sap’, ‘cup’, and ‘cab’ all have different meanings in English. By so doing, a phonetic study provides an inventory of sounds of a language.

PHONOLOGY
Phonology is the study of how we organize and structure sounds to convey meaning. The output of Phonetics, that is the speech sounds, constitutes the input for phonological analysis.
Knowledge of the phonology of a language allows you to combine sounds that make meaningful speech. Having phonological knowledge means for example, knowing what sounds can combine together to form words, what sounds can occur at the beginning or at the end of a word, and how they should be pronounced.

MORPHOLOGY
Morphology is the level of linguistic study concerned with the internal structure of words and rules of word formation. It is devoted to the study of rules governing the formation of words in human language. The morpheme is the smallest meaningful grammatical unit. The morpheme is the basic unit that combines to form words. A word may be “defined as the minimum independent linguistic unit having an identifiable meaning and grammatical function with a fairly consistent phonological shape”. The word is the basis of the distinction that is always made between morphology (the study of the internal structure of words) and syntax (the study of sentence structure). There are two basic types of morphemes, bound and free morphemes.

SYNTAX
Syntax is the aspect of grammar of a language which deals with how words are put together to form sentences and how such sentences are interpreted in natural languages therefore is the study of how words are arranged to form sentences. Syntax is the branch of linguistics that is concerned with how words are arranged to build up longer expressions.
Syntax is very central to human communication. It mediates between sound and meaning. Knowing the syntax of a language entails knowing the rules of sentence formation in that language. Thus, when one knows his language, part of such knowledge is the syntax of his language.

SEMANTICS
Semantics is the level of linguistics that is concerned with the study of meaning of words, phrases and sentences in language. It examines the way in which language expressions have meaning.
In semantics, words are usually divided into their sense and reference. The reference of an expression is the entity it refers to while sense refers to the ordinary linguistic meaning of an expression. Whereas reference is concerned with the physical object in the real world while sense refers to the system of linguistic relationship existing between words in a language.

PRAGMATICS
The study of the rules and principles which govern language in use, as opposed to the abstract, idealized rules of grammar. Pragmatics reveals that meaning affects the world and is also affected by the world. It shows that meaning is contextually determined.
Pragmatics describes languages from the point of view of the users of language with respect to the choices they make, the difficulties they face in their day to day social interactions and the effects their use of language have on other participants in speech events.