1、What is Linguistics,Definition,Linguistics is the comprehensive and scientific study of language. comprehensive: it embraces all aspects of human communication-from a description of the sounds of speech to the analysis of the way in which the full complexities of thought are expressed in spoken or w

2、ritten form.,scientific: it deals with a specific body of material, language, as its subject matter and aims at building up a systematic theory of language at all levels. Linguistics differs from other sciences in that it both uses language as the tool and has language as its object to study.,Lingui

3、stics is also scientific in its methodology. The work of linguists consists of collecting observable data about language, setting up hypotheses, testing the validity of them against the collected data and then decide accordingly either to reject these hypotheses or accept them as established theorie

4、s.,The Scope of Linguistics,interlinguistic relationship among different linguistic elements. extralinguistic relation with the outside world.,The Birth of Modern Linguistics,The tradition in language study originated from ancient Greece and Rome. It claimed that the best way to describe a language

5、was to begin with a description of its words, and that the only language worth the scholars attention was literary Greek of the highly educated. It started by classifying words, and, as a result, the emphasis of their study was put on the written form.,This prescriptive tradition was to be followed

6、first by Latin scholars in ancient Rome and then by the scholars of other European languages. They took up the Latin framework as the only correct way to prescribe grammatical rules of correctness.,Ferdinand de Saussure(斐迪南德索緒爾), Swiss linguist, the founder of modern linguistics. It declares that li

7、nguistics is descriptive and all languages should be studied on equal terms. It claims the priority of the spoken language.,Two complementary approaches of linguistic study by Saussure: synchronic VS diachronic diachronic synchronic a) no diachronic study of a language is possible without a series of synchronic study being made of the different stages of the language in its development. b)the historical develpoment is clearly not relevant to an understanding