INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - LEVELS AND SCOPE OF LINGUISTICS
The main scope of linguistics is Language. Linguists differ according to what they consider as included in the scope of linguistic studies. Some consider the proper area of linguistics to be confined to the levels of phonology, morphology and syntax. This can be called a Micro-linguistic perspective. However, some take a broader, or macro-linguistic view that includes the other levels of analysis mentioned above, as well as other aspects of language and its relationship with many areas of human activity. Phonetics is the study of human sounds and phonology is the classification of the sounds within the system of a particular language or languages. Phonetics is divided into three types according to the production (articulatory), transmission (acoustic) and perception (auditive) of sounds. Three categories of sounds must be recognised at the outset: phones (human sounds), phonemes (units which distinguish meaning in a language), allophones (non-distinctive unit). Sounds can be divided into consonant and vowels. The former can be characterized according to 1) place 2) manner of articulation and 3) voice (voiceless or voiced). For vowels one uses a coordinate system called a vowel quadrangle within which actual vowel values are located Phonotactics deals with the combinations of sounds possible and where sounds can occur in a syllable. The major structure for the organization of sounds is the syllable. It consists of an onset (beginning), a rhyme (everything after the beginning) which can be sub-divided into a nucleus (vowel or vowel-like center) and a coda (right- edge). Prosody is concerned with features of words and sentences above the level of individual sounds, e.g. Stress, pitch, intonation. Stress is frequently contrastive in English. The unstressed syllables of English show characteristic phonetic reduction and words containing this are called weak forms. It is essential to distinguish between writing and sound. There are various terms (homophony, homography, homonymy) to characterize the relationship between the written and the spoken form of words depending on what the match between the two is like.
INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - LEVELS AND SCOPE OF LINGUISTICS