12 linguistics branches Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

12 linguistics branches - Research Paper Example (Crystal, 1997) Morphology is like the mother who teaches the baby how to talk. This branch often studies how the words are constructed out of smaller units which have a meaning or grammatical function, for example the word friendly is constructed from friend. This branch has a sister two sisters called syntax which studies how the words combine to form sentences and the rules which govern the formation of sentences, and phonetics that studies speech sounds; how they are produced in the vocal tract (articulatory phonetics), how they are transmitted through the air (acoustic phonetics), and how they are perceived by the listener (auditory phonetics).Their mandate is to ensure words are correctly written and spoken. (Crystal, 1997) The screaming child, phonology studies the sound system of language; how the particular sounds used in each language form an integrated system for encoding information and how such systems differ from one language to another. On the other hand the curious father, psycholinguistics always studies the mental processes underlying the planning, production, perception and comprehension of speech, for example how memory limitations affect speech production and comprehension. This is to ensure the child speaks correctly with good perceptions of things. The twin brother of the father, uncle sociolinguistics, is also keen to the social factors such as social class, educational level, and age, sex and ethnic origin so that the child may grow to understand them to link in the sentences. (Crystal, 1997) The elder brother of the child, semantics who studies the meaning and how words and sentences are related to the real or imaginary objects they refer to and the situations they describe. This is to ensure that the child links together the words that are related. However the elder sister of the child, pragmatics is keen in on the context of the situation. He studies the use of language in communication, particularly the relationships between