About Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of what human languages are and how they work. Many linguists study a variety of languages, others study a singale language intensively. Some of the special areas that linguists look at are:

Theoretical Linguistics: the analysis of language structure focusing on the sound patterns of language (phonetics and phonology), the structure of words (morphology), the structure of sentences (syntax), the interpretation of words and sentences (semantics), or the patterns of variation observed in the structures of a broad range of the world's languages (typology).

Descriptive Linguistics: the investigation of language in context, including the documentation of lesser-studied or endangered languages (field linguistics), the study of the interaction between language and social factors (sociolinguistics), and the study of how languages change over time (historical linguistics).

Experimental and Psychological Linguistics: the mental representation and processing of words, sentences, and sounds (psycholinguistics), laboratory research on the perception and production of speech (experimental phonetics), and the study of how languages are learned (language acquisition).

More information about the field and some of our particular areas of interest at the University of Alberta can be found by following the links on the left.