which of these is not a type of linguistics essay

Professional Communication Questions & Answers – Language and Linguistics

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Grammatical level divided into Syntax and Morphology

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Non-Western traditions

Greek and Roman antiquity
The European Middle Ages
The Renaissance
Development of the comparative method
The role of analogy
Inner and outer form
Phonetics and dialectology
Structural linguistics in Europe
Structural linguistics in America
Transformational-generative grammar
Tagmemic, stratificational, and other approaches
Harris’s grammar
Chomsky’s grammar
Modifications in Chomsky’s grammar
Modes of language
Hierarchy of levels
Technical terminology
Interstratal relationships
Combination of structuralism and functionalism
Phonological contributions
Theory of markedness
Later contributions
Sound change
Grammatical change
Semantic change
Grimm’s law
Proto-Indo-European reconstruction
Steps in the comparative method
Criticisms of the comparative method
Internal reconstruction
Language classification
Language acquisition by children
Speech perception
Other areas of research
Delineation of the field
Social dimensions
Anthropological linguistics
Computational linguistics
Mathematical linguistics
Applied linguistics
Early dialect studies
Dialect atlases
The value and applications of dialectology
Social dialectology

How did Noam Chomsky influence the field of linguistics?
What was Noam Chomsky’s early life like?
What are Noam Chomsky’s politics?

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UCLA - Department of Linguistics - What is Linguistics?
The Canadian Encyclopedia - Linguistics
Social Science LibreTexts - Linguistic definitions
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Philosophy of Linguistics
Pressbooks Create - More than Words: The Intersection of Language and Culture - Introduction to Linguistics
California State University, Long Beach - An outline of the history of linguistics
linguistics - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
Table Of Contents

linguistics , the scientific study of language . The word was first used in the middle of the 19th century to emphasize the difference between a newer approach to the study of language that was then developing and the more traditional approach of philology . The differences were and are largely matters of attitude, emphasis, and purpose. The philologist is concerned primarily with the historical development of languages as it is manifest in written texts and in the context of the associated literature and culture . The linguist, though he may be interested in written texts and in the development of languages through time, tends to give priority to spoken languages and to the problems of analyzing them as they operate at a given point in time.

The field of linguistics may be divided in terms of three dichotomies: synchronic versus diachronic , theoretical versus applied, and microlinguistics versus macrolinguistics. A synchronic description of a language describes the language as it is at a given time; a diachronic description is concerned with the historical development of the language and the structural changes that have taken place in it. The goal of theoretical linguistics is the construction of a general theory of the structure of language or of a general theoretical framework for the description of languages; the aim of applied linguistics is the application of the findings and techniques of the scientific study of language to practical tasks, especially to the elaboration of improved methods of language teaching. The terms microlinguistics and macrolinguistics are not yet well established, and they are, in fact, used here purely for convenience. The former refers to a narrower and the latter to a much broader view of the scope of linguistics. According to the microlinguistic view, languages should be analyzed for their own sake and without reference to their social function, to the manner in which they are acquired by children, to the psychological mechanisms that underlie the production and reception of speech , to the literary and the aesthetic or communicative function of language, and so on. In contrast, macrolinguistics embraces all of these aspects of language. Various areas within macrolinguistics have been given terminological recognition: psycholinguistics , sociolinguistics , anthropological linguistics , dialectology , mathematical and computational linguistics , and stylistics . Macrolinguistics should not be identified with applied linguistics. The application of linguistic methods and concepts to language teaching may well involve other disciplines in a way that microlinguistics does not. But there is, in principle, a theoretical aspect to every part of macrolinguistics, no less than to microlinguistics.

A large portion of this article is devoted to theoretical, synchronic microlinguistics, which is generally acknowledged as the central part of the subject; it will be abbreviated henceforth as theoretical linguistics.

History of linguistics

Earlier history.

Linguistic speculation and investigation, insofar as is known, has gone on in only a small number of societies. To the extent that Mesopotamian, Chinese, and Arabic learning dealt with grammar , their treatments were so enmeshed in the particularities of those languages and so little known to the European world until recently that they have had virtually no impact on Western linguistic tradition. Chinese linguistic and philological scholarship stretches back for more than two millennia, but the interest of those scholars was concentrated largely on phonetics , writing , and lexicography; their consideration of grammatical problems was bound up closely with the study of logic.

Hand with pencil writing on page. (handwriting; write)

Certainly the most interesting non-Western grammatical tradition—and the most original and independent—is that of India , which dates back at least two and one-half millennia and which culminates with the grammar of Panini , of the 5th century bce . There are three major ways in which the Sanskrit tradition has had an impact on modern linguistic scholarship. As soon as Sanskrit became known to the Western learned world, the unravelling of comparative Indo-European grammar ensued, and the foundations were laid for the whole 19th-century edifice of comparative philology and historical linguistics. But, for this, Sanskrit was simply a part of the data; Indian grammatical learning played almost no direct part. Nineteenth-century workers, however, recognized that the native tradition of phonetics in ancient India was vastly superior to Western knowledge, and this had important consequences for the growth of the science of phonetics in the West. Third, there is in the rules or definitions (sutras) of Panini a remarkably subtle and penetrating account of Sanskrit grammar. The construction of sentences, compound nouns, and the like is explained through ordered rules operating on underlying structures in a manner strikingly similar in part to modes of modern theory. As might be imagined, this perceptive Indian grammatical work held great fascination for 20th-century theoretical linguists. A study of Indian logic in relation to Paninian grammar alongside Aristotelian and Western logic in relation to Greek grammar and its successors could bring illuminating insights.

Whereas in ancient Chinese learning a separate field of study that might be called grammar scarcely took root, in ancient India a sophisticated version of this discipline developed early alongside the other sciences. Even though the study of Sanskrit grammar may originally have had the practical aim of keeping the sacred Vedic texts and their commentaries pure and intact, the study of grammar in India in the 1st millennium bce had already become an intellectual end in itself.

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> Writing Essays in English Language and Linguistics
> Introduction

Book contents

Frontmatter
Acknowledgements
Introduction
A guide to the book's icons: what do they mean?
Part 1 The basics
Part 2 Getting down to writing
Linguistics glossary

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012

When it comes to writing, academic disciplines – particularly those within the humanities and social sciences – have a good deal in common and, for the most part, they share very similar expectations of students' writing. However, despite such similarity, each discipline also tends to have its own particular set of conventions, its own way of doing things, and the fields of English language and linguistics are certainly no exception. The variation that can exist between the writing practices of different disciplines can leave students who are just starting out on course assignments or research projects uncertain about what exactly they should be doing and how. Although libraries or student services units will often produce guides to help them navigate this territory, these tend to be generic rather than discipline-specific; and while individual departments may give their students guidance on how to write within their particular discipline, such guidance is often sketchy at best, providing only a few general pointers and often leaving them with more questions than answers.

This book uncovers, for the intending or newly enrolled student, some of the particularities of writing English language and linguistics essays and research projects. In doing so, it presents discipline-specific guidance on such things as assignment questions, information sources, the nature of evidence, referencing, stylistic issues and formatting, alongside much that is more generic and applicable to other areas of academic inquiry. All examples, tasks and illustrations are English language/linguistics related and many are authentic.

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Neil Murray , University of South Australia
Book: Writing Essays in English Language and Linguistics
Online publication: 05 June 2012
Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139035347.001

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The Branches of Linguistics

Alethes.net Blog Author

In its most basic form, linguistics is the scientific study of language.

The field of linguistics is typically broken down into different sub-branches that cover everything from the origin and evolution of language to the way our brains process sound.

What’s more, these branches are constantly evolving in response to new discoveries about how humans interact, learn or what goes on inside our minds.

The importance of linguistics is often underestimated, after all, language is what we use to transmit and accumulate knowledge. Linguistics has increasingly important implications on other social studies, such as psychology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and artificial intelligence, to name a few.

What is Linguistics and What Does it Do?

The job of a linguist typically involves answering one or several of the following questions:

Phonetics – how do humans produce and perceive acoustic or visual signals? Phonology – how are acoustic signals organised in spoken languages or dialects? Morphology – how are words formed? Syntax – how are sentences formed? Semantics – what do linguistic expressions or signals mean? Pragmatics – how does meaning depend on context?

It is not uncommon for these subtopics to be paired together, typically as Phonetics and Phonology, Morphology and Syntax, and Semantics and Pragmatics.

Branches of Linguistics Alethes.net infographic

Phonetics is the study of how sounds are produced and perceived.

This subtopic can be broken down even further, looking into three aspects – how humans produce speech, how different vocal movements affect the resulting sound and how humans convert the resulting sounds into information.

Modern phonetics have three main branches of study:

Articulatory phonetics – the study of sounds made with the articulators
Acoustic phonetics – the study of acoustic results of different articulations
Auditory phonetics – the study of how listeners perceive and understand linguistic signals

Although similar to phonetics, phonology deals with how the signals of a language or dialect are systematically organised.

For example, phonetics might investigate how a specific sound is made and how slight variations occur when we make the same sound, whereas phonology studies how this sound relates to other sounds of the same language.

Morphology – the study of words – understands how words work as ‘units’ and how they can have different meanings on their own, and when bound with other units.

Take the example:

Free morpheme: free

Bound morpheme: – ly

Word: freely

One aspect associated with morphology are affixes; elements including prefixes, suffixes and circumfixes.

Syntax is the study of how we put words together to form sentences.

Although there are thousands of words for us to choose from, the way that words are put together is rather particular, in order for them to make sense.

Slight changes in syntax can often mean significant changes in interpretation, which is why syntax remains of such high importance in traditional linguistics.

Semantics is the study of the meaning of words from an “objective” perspective. Although meaning often depends on context (pragmatics), we have a sense that words map directly onto reality.

The idea that words can have definite meanings is rooted in religious tradition and our symbolic culture. This is why semantics overlaps with philosophy.

An important distinction in semantics is that between sense and reference. For example, the expressions “Charlie” and “the little rascal” might have the same referent (e.g. a child) but they have a different sense because of how they relate to other expressions.

Pragmatics deals with how context contributes to the meaning of expressions.

For example, a single word may have a different connotation each time it is used as part of a phrase, sentence or paragraph. And just because one person uses and understands the meaning of one word, does not mean that others will use it and interpret it in the same way

Rather than understanding a word or phrase based on the exact meaning of the individual words, semantics takes the perspective of the speaker, the people involved and the environment that they are in.

Other Branches of Linguistics

The beginning of this article has addressed the different subtopics of linguistics.

However, looking into the actual application of linguistics in real life scenarios, there can be an additional seven subfields – or branches to be considered:

Sociolinguistics – the study of the relationship between language and society
Applied Linguistics – the study of identifying and applying solutions to language-related life problems
Computational Linguistics – the study of understanding written and spoken language from a computational perspective
Psycholinguistics – the study of mental aspects of language and speech
Stylistics – the study and interpretation of language in regard to their tonal style
Historical Linguistics – the study of the history of linguistics and how languages change and how they are related to each other
Comparative Linguistics – the study of historical relationships between two or more languages and determining similarities they may possess.

If you are interested in a future career in linguistics, these are some of the branches you may want to consider investigating further.

However, below, is an expanded introduction to each:

Sociolinguistics

As a field concerned with how language is affected by society, sociolinguists investigate how example factors such as gender, ethnicity, age, or social class determine the use and interpretation of language.

This is not to be confused with the sociology of language, which looks at the effect of language on society.

Applied Linguistics

Applied linguistics deals with how language is applied to every-day life problems.

Simple examples of where applied linguistics may be studied and used within resolution, include cyber-bullying and trolling or finding alternative ways to communicate with people that can’t use speaking or listening like the majority of the population, sign language for example.

Computational Linguistics

Without realising it, you may interact with examples of computational linguistics more than you think.

This field of study investigates characterising languages in a way that computers and artificial intelligence can understand the principles and properties of language and syntax.

Think about computational linguistics next time you ask Siri or Alexa to complete your vocal command!

Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics looks at the mental aspects of linguistics,; the cognitive abilitiesknowledge required for us to produce and understand language.

It involves the study and investigation into the mental processes behind words and sentences and how they are deployed when communicating.

Psycholinguistics is a branch of cognitive science that works closely with other fields of linguistics, particularly when it comes to the way language is acquired by developing children.

Stylistics is the study of how language style is used in texts, particularly of literary works.

An example of this is how literary students are often tasked with dissecting and understanding the words, and sentence structure that Shakespeare used in many of his famed plays.

However, it is not reserved for ancient literary works.

A case of stylistic linguistics in recent years was depicted in Netflix’s documentary of the Unabomber , in which written letters by the perpetrator were connected and used as evidence for his crime.

Historical Linguistics

Historical linguistics studies the history of languages; how they have changed over time and how they are related to one another.

It looks further into how and why languages change over time; often reconstructing them back to the past form of a language.

Historical linguistics is also very similar to the field of comparative linguistics.

Comparative Linguistics

Often related to historical linguistics just mentioned, this is about investigating where words have been ‘borrowed’ between languages, but where words can be related to a single, often ancient, language and how their uses and meanings have evolved.

It refers back to ‘comparing’ different languages and how they have evolved from a single parent language.

Challenging Traditional Linguistic Concepts

Of course, everything about linguistics revolves around the concept of language. We can legitimately study “language” as we know it, because we have an intuitive grasp of it as animals that can use it.

However, it turns out scientists don’t have a clear definition of language especially as compared to the communication systems of other animals. There is still a debate about what language is and how it evolved, and this lack of consistency with biology does not help the scientific status of linguistics.

At Alethes.net we have proposed a solution to this conundrum. It uses the concept of animal signals.

Basically, language is a way of producing signals that is in many ways similar to what birds do when they sing, or what chimpanzees do when they gesture.

However, language differs most fundamentally in the way human beings try to make the receivers of those signals respond. Because no other animal does this, it is important to review our understanding of linguistics in view of these facts.

Linguistics can best be described as the scientific study of language.

However, language is a complex subject, it is not only about how we read, write or speak, but also about how our actions and environment can impact our language, just as much as our skills or education.

In this article, we hope to have introduced you to some of the traditional concepts of linguistics, and how there are distinct differences as well as obvious overlaps between the different fields.

At Alethes.net , we introduce a new approach to the study of language. We focus on concepts that are demonstrably more fundamental than those traditional ones, such as the concepts of animal signal and the linguistic universal of human kinship.

If you want to read what we have to say then please check out our article ‘ Why science needs to understand language ’. Or visit our journal to read our original research papers.

If you wish to get involved with us further, or even help contribute to our project, then please get in touch with Jose and the team via our contact page .

Unified Style Sheet for Linguistics

These guidelines for in-text citations and references grew out of discussions among a group of editors of linguistics journals during 2005-2006, primarily elaborated by Stan Dubinsky, and were approved by the LSA on January 7, 2007.

For guidance with other aspects of formatting linguistics papers, see The Generic Style Rules for Linguistics . For presenting data, follow the Leipzig Glossing Rules . The Linguistics Program faculty recommends that students follow these guidelines when writing term papers for classes and when writing the M.A. essay.

For in-text references, use the last name of the author(s) and year of publication, followed by a colon and page number(s) where necessary: (Chomsky 1999: 203-204). If Chomsky published more than one thing in 1999, refer to them (both in the text and in the references) as Chomsky 1999a and Chomsky 1999b. If you mention Chomsky by name in your sentence, only the year of publication and page number(s) are necessary: "As made clear by Chomsky (1999: 203-204), . . . "

Make sure that all in-text references are included in your references list at the end of the paper, and that your references list only includes works referred to in the body of your paper.

Style considerations

Superfluous font-styles should be omitted.

Do not use small caps for author/editor names, since they do not help to distinguish these from any other bits of information in the citation. In contrast, italics are worthwhile for distinguishing volume (book, journal, dissertation) titles [+ital] from article and chapter titles [-ital].

Superfluous punctuation should be left out

Once italic is adopted to distinguish volumes from articles/chapters (as above), then single or double quotations around article titles are superfluous and only add visual clutter.

Differing capitalization styles should be used to make category distinctions

Use capitalization of all lexical words for journal titles and capitalize only the first word (plus proper names and the first word after a colon) for book/dissertation titles and article/chapter titles. This is a useful diagnostic for discriminating between titles that are recurring and those that are not. The journal style for capitalization should also be applied to the title of book series. Thus, the citation of an SNLLT volume would be punctuated: Objects and other subjects: Grammatical functions, functional categories, and configurationality (Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 52).

All author/editor first names should be spelled out

Not doing so only serves to make the citation less informative. Without full first names, the 20th-century index for Language alone would conflate five different people as 'J. Smith', four as 'J. Harris', three each under 'A. Cohen' and 'P. Lee', two each under 'R. Kent', 'J. Anderson', 'H. Klein' and 'J. Klein'.

The ampersand is useful

Use ampersand to distinguish higher and lower order conjuncts, i.e. [W & X] and [Y & Z], as in Culicover & Wilkins and Koster & May. It is relatively easy to see that reference is made here to two pairs of authors here (cf. Culicover and Wilkins and Koster and May).

Name repetitions are good

While using a line ____ may save a little space, or a few characters, it also makes each such citation referentially dependent on an antecedent, and the effort of calculating such antecedents is more than what it saved typographically. Each citation should be internally complete.

Four-digit year plus period only

Extra parentheses are visual clutter and superfluous.

Commas and periods and other punctuation

Separate citation components with periods (e.g., Author. Year. Title.) and subcomponents with commas (e.g., Author1, Author2 & Author3). Please note the ampersand (&), rather than the word "and" before the name of the last author, and no comma before the "&". The use of the colon between title and subtitle and between place and publisher is traditional, but we do not use it between journal volume number and page numbers.

Parentheses around ed. makes sense

Commas and periods should be used exclusively to separate citation components (e.g., "Author. Year."), or subcomponents (e.g. "author1, author2 & author3). Since "ed." is neither a component nor a subcomponent, but a modifier of a component, it should not be separated from the name by a comma:

surname, first name = author surname, first name (ed.). = editor (NOT surname, first name, ed.) surname, first name & first name surname (eds.) = editors

For conference proceedings, working papers, etc.

For conference proceedings published with an ISSN, treat the proceedings as a journal: Include both the full conference name and any commonly used acronym for the conference (BLS, WCCFL, etc.) in the journal-title position. For proceedings not published with an ISSN, treat the proceedings as any other book, using the full title as listed on the front cover or title page. If the title (and subtitle if there is one) only includes an acronym for the conference name, expand the acronym in square brackets or parentheses following the acronym. If the title does not include an acronym which is commonly used for the conference name, include the acronym in square brackets or parentheses following the conference name. The advantage of including the acronym after the society title is that it makes the entry much more identifiable in a list of references.

Use "edn." as an abbreviation for "edition", thus "2nd edn."

This avoids ambiguity and confusion with "ed." (editor).

Names with "von", "van", "de", etc.

If the "van" (or the "de" or other patronymic) is lower case and separated from the rest by a space (e.g. Elly van Gelderen), then alphabetize by the first upper-case element: Gelderen, Elly van. The addition of "see ..." in comprehensive indices and lists might be helpful for clarification: van Gelderen, Elly (see Gelderen)

Names with "Jr.", "IV.", etc.

Following library practice, list elements such as "Jr." as a subelement after names, separated by a comma. Smith, Sean, Jr.

Use "In" to designate chapters in collections

This makes the book's format maximally similar to the standard citation format. This, in turn, would be time-saving when the author or the editor notice that more than one article is cited from a given collection and hence that that book's details should be set out as a separate entry in the references (and the full details deleted from the articles' entries).

author. year. chapter title. In editor name (ed.), collection title, page numbers. publisher.

Journal volume numbers

We favor: volume number(volume issue). starting page-ending page. Thus: 22(1). 135-169. Note the space between volume number/issue and page numbers. Special formatting (e.g., bold for volume number) is superfluous. Issue numbers are a parenthetical modifier (cf. "ed." above) of the volume number. While it is not NECESSARY information for identifying the article, it is extremely USEFUL information.

Dissertations/theses.

These conform to the already-widespread Place: Publisher format and fit readily into the rest of the standard: Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation. Instead of archaic state abbreviations, use the official two-letter postal abbreviations. Note that national and other traditions vary in exactly what is labeled 'thesis' versus 'dissertation' and in distinguishing 'Ph.D.' from 'doctoral' dissertations.

Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation. Chapel Hill: UNC MA thesis.

Online materials

The basic information here author, date, title remains the same, and the URL where the resource was found takes the place of the publisher or journal. We urge authors to include the date the material was accessed, in parentheses after the URL, since new versions often replace old ones. For a .pdf file, this would be the date of downloading, but for a resource like an on-line dictionary consulted repeatedly, a range of dates may be needed.

For additional discussion of handling online citations, authors may want to consult this guide: Walker, Janice R. & Todd Taylor. 1998. The Columbia Guide to Online Style . New York: Columbia University Press.

Example references (indent the second and subsequent lines of a reference by one-half inch:

Blevins, Juliette. 2004. Evolutionary phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Casali, Roderic F. 1998. Predicting ATR activity. Chicago Linguistic Society ( CLS ) 34(1). 55-68.

Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Knowledge of language . New York: Praeger.

Coetsem, Frans van. 2000. A general and unified theory of the transmission process in language contact. Heidelberg: Winter.

Franks, Steven. 2005. Bulgarian clitics are positioned in the syntax. http://www.cogs.indiana.edu/people/homepages/franks/Bg_clitics_remark_dense.pdf (17 May, 2006.)

Iverson, Gregory K. 1983. Korean /s/. Journal of Phonetics 11. 191-200.

Iverson, Gregory K. 1989. On the category supralaryngeal. Phonology 6. 285-303.

Johnson, Kyle, Mark Baker & Ian Roberts. 1989. Passive arguments raised. Linguistic Inquiry 20. 219-251.

Lahiri, Aditi (ed.). 2000. Analogy, leveling, markedness: Principles of change in phonology and morphology (Trends in Linguistics 127). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

McCarthy, John J. & Alan S. Prince. 1999. Prosodic morphology. In John A. Goldsmith (ed.), Phonological theory: The essential readings , 238-288. Malden, MA & Oxford: Blackwell.

Murray, Robert W. & Theo Vennemann. 1983. Sound change and syllable structure in Germanic phonology. Language 59(3). 514-528.

Oxford English Dictionary , 2nd edn. 1989. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pedersen, Johan. 2005. The Spanish impersonal se -construction: Constructional variation and change. Constructions 1, http://www.constructions-online.de. (3 April, 2007.)

Rissanen, Matti. 1999. Syntax. In Roger Lass (ed.), Cambridge History of the English Language , vol. 3, 187-331. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.

Stewart, Thomas W., Jr. 2000. Mutation as morphology: Bases, stems, and shapes in Scottish Gaelic. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University dissertation.

Webelhuth, Gert (ed.). 1995. Government and binding theory and the minimalist program: Principles and parameters in syntactic theory. Oxford: Blackwell.

Yu, Alan C. L. 2003. The morphology and phonology of infixation. Berkeley, CA: University of California dissertation.

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How To Write A Linguistics Essay

Table of Contents

Content of this article

Outline sample
How to start a linguistics essay
How to write body paragraphs for a linguistics essay
How to conclude a linguistics essay
How to format a linguistics essay

Language is important and impacts as well as interacts with the world on a daily basis. Different sections and issues of language make for interesting essay topics , for example, how language forms, the meaning of language, and language content. While these examples might seem straightforward and fairly easy when to read, developing a linguistic essay from them can be a challenge. Contrary to what many students might think, linguistic essays have largely taken after scientific articles and not literary theory essays. When writing linguistic papers, it is hence important to be direct, simple, clear, and concise. Students must also avoid overstatements, unnecessary qualifiers, digressions, and verbiage in their essays. Objectivity should be maintained throughout the essay, and personal opinions or experiences must be left out unless otherwise stated in the instructions. A complete linguistic essay must demonstrate or show a capacity for methodical, and clear thinking.

Linguistic essays are written for different purposes, but the main reason is to determine whether students are conversant with the basic concepts, debates, and research interests within the larger subject of linguistics. Teachers often seek to know their student`s capacity to deliver when given different scenarios and questions within linguistics. These help to determine the effectiveness of the teacher’s delivery methods as well as the students’ interest in a particular subject. An instructor can also be interested in determining how best students can incorporate or adhere to the writing standards needed in linguistic papers. As stated earlier, linguistic papers are taken after scientific papers and are hence expected to follow certain formats and include some sections that are often left out in other essays.

Linguistics Essay Structure

As with any scientific paper, three sections are included in a paper, and they include:

the introduction,
and the conclusion.

While the term main body is often included in structures, it should not appear as a title in an essay. However, students should only include sections or points that are in line with their main argument , point, or perspective. A linguistics essay structure is hence essay but needs to be strictly adhered to.

When called upon to write an essay , it is always advisable, to begin with a draft before developing the final copy for submission or presentation. A linguistic essay draft provides one with the opportunity to consider many angles and perspectives and also gifts writers with the space of making some mistakes and correcting them as well. It will indeed take more time to prepare a draft and then prepare the final copy, but it saves students from getting lower grades as well as doing revisions and corrections later once the instructor detects some obvious mistakes.

An outline also comes in handy and on many occasions guides and helps students to be consistent with their argumentation. As already stated, an introduction, the main body, and a conclusion make up the structure of a linguistic essay, but when developing a linguistic essay outline , the main body section is often replaced by the points or supporting arguments.

Below is an example of an outline for a linguistic essay given that the essay topic is:

Developmental Language Disorders

Introduction

The connection between language and reading disabilities:

Correlation between language and reading;
Language, reading, and poor reading comprehension;
Common literacy outcomes for people with language impairments – the focus is on children;
Speech perception in children.

Conclusion and Recommendations

How to write an introduction for a linguistic essay

An introduction serves the purpose of revealing the topic or subject that the student has been asked to write about. A linguistic essay introduction is supposed to explain the main topic or subject and clearly specify the writer’s goal. Before starting the essay, it is important first to narrow down the scope and approach it from an angle that is specific. Readers need to be taken through the topic, the structure of the essay as well as the steps that need to be taken to reach the essay’s ultimate goal.

How to write body paragraphs for a linguistic essay

As already stated, the main body mainly has supporting arguments and points which help to explain the writer’s perspective. In this section, thorough research comes in handy. Linguistics essays rely heavily on research, and it is advisable to make use of genuine sources to enhance the essay’s credibility. The points or arguments need to stand out and support the author’s main argument exhaustively.

How to write a conclusion for a linguistic essay

A linguistics essay conclusion is not challenging and mainly references the introduction. The writer’s main goal must be restated. A summary of the main points or the findings of the research must also be provided. The writer can also include a section specifying some of the things that can be done to improve research on the topic in the future.

How to format a linguistic essay

The use of examples is indeed essential when trying to make a point or when giving real situations which directly relate to the topic under review. Examples help to make something easier to understand and provide realistic instances of what the writer is handling. It is hence vital to use them because they also help to make the explanations easier and thus aid the readers to understand the writer’s point of view.

Research is vital to being a good linguistics essay writer. It is important to find other sources that will help one develop their main point and reference or cite them accordingly. Being scientific simply means writers need to follow APA or MLA standards or any other standards as specified by the instructor. In-text citations must be included, especially when the point included is not original or is borrowed from another article. Below are two examples to help differentiate between APA and MLA in-text citations:

According to Kiragu (2016), language can be defined as “a system that involves words as well as the symbols used by people and other animals to communicate.”

As depicted in the above example, while putting in-text citations using the APA format students are expected to use the author’s surname and year only.

According to Kiragu (16), language can be defined as “a system that involves words as well as the symbols used by people and other animals to communicate.”

Unlike the APA format where writers are asked to include the year, in MLA students are expected to include the page number from whence they got the definition or any other information.

Once all the sources have been accurately cited, it is important to include them in a bibliography at the end of the essay. Each formatting standard has its rules and writers need to familiarize themselves with each of them to avoid the possibility of using two in one document.

Finalizing Essay

Revising an essay is also vital to ensuring that an essay adheres to the formatting rules of the referencing style that the writer chose. It also gifts students with the opportunity of correcting some errors such as grammatical, punctuation, and vocabulary errors. In some instances, writers drift from their main argument, and it is only through revising an essay that such mistakes can be detected and avoided. Clarity and objectivity are indeed important to developing an essay that is specific and narrow in scope. The above can only be enhanced when revising an essay.

Plagiarism is often discouraged by instructors, but only a few students can adhere to this rule. Citations must be included, especially when a writer used other people’s work to develop their own. The style used to include citations is dependent on the instructions given, but the common ones include APA and MLA.

How to Write a Linguistics Essay

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Geoffrey Finch

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For most of us this is where the crunch really comes. Reading about the subject is OK but having to write something intelligible about it is another matter. All that terminology, those diagrams! Well it isn’t so difficult provided you bear in mind a few basic rules. It’s the purpose of this chapter to say what these are.

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Finch, G. (2003). How to Write a Linguistics Essay. In: How to Study Linguistics. Palgrave Study Guides:Literature. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-80213-1_7

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Definition and Examples of Text Linguistics

Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms

An Introduction to Punctuation
Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
B.A., English, State University of New York

Text linguistics is a branch of linguistics concerned with the description and analysis of extended texts (either spoken or written) in communicative contexts . Sometimes spelled as one word, textlinguistics (after the German Textlinguistik ).

In some ways, notes David Crystal, text linguistics "overlaps considerably with . . . discourse analysis and some linguists see very little difference between them" ( Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics , 2008).

Examples and Observations

"In recent years, the study of texts has become a defining feature of a branch of linguistics referred to (especially in Europe) as textlinguistics , and 'text' here has central theoretical status. Texts are seen as language units which have a definable communicative function, characterized by such principles as cohesion , coherence and informativeness, which can be used to provide a formal definition of what constitutes their textuality or texture . On the basis of these principles, texts are classified into text types, or genres , such as road signs, news reports, poems, conversations, etc. . . . Some linguists make a distinction between the notions of 'text,' viewed as a physical product, and 'discourse,' viewed as a dynamic process of expression and interpretation, whose function and mode of operation can be investigated using psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic , as well as linguistic, techniques." (David Crystal, Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics , 6th ed. Blackwell, 2008)

Seven Principles of Textuality

"[The] seven principles of textuality: cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality, and intertextuality, demonstrate how richly every text is connected to your knowledge of world and society, even a telephone directory. Since the appearance of the Introduction to Text Linguistics [by Robert de Beaugrande and Wolfgang Dressler] in 1981, which used these principles as its framework, we need to emphasize that they designate the major modes of connectedness and not (as some studies assumed) the linguistic features of text-artifacts nor the borderline between 'texts' versus 'non-texts' (c.f. II.106ff, 110). The principles apply wherever an artifact is 'textualized,' even if someone judges the results 'incoherent,' 'unintentional,' 'unacceptable,' and so on. Such judgments indicate that the text is not appropriate (suitable to the occasion), or efficient (easy to handle), or effective (helpful for the goal) (I.21); but it is still a text. Usually, disturbances or irregularities are discounted or at worst construed as signals of spontaneity, stress, overload, ignorance, and so on, and not as a loss or a denial of textuality." (Robert De Beaugrande, "Getting Started." New Foundations for a Science of Text and Discourse: Cognition, Communication, and the Freedom of Access to Knowledge and Society . Ablex, 1997)

Definitions of Text

"Crucial to the establishment of any functional variety is the definition of text and the criteria that have been used to delimit one functional variety from another. Some text-linguists (Swales 1990; Bhatia 1993; Biber 1995) do not specifically define 'text/a text' but their criteria for text analysis imply that they are following a formal/structural approach, namely, that a text is a unit larger than a sentence (clause), in fact it is a combination of a number of sentences (clauses) or a number of elements of structure, each made of one or more sentences (clauses). In such cases, the criteria for distinguishing between two texts are the presence and/or absence of elements of structure or types of sentences, clauses, words, and even morphemes such as -ed, -ing, -en in the two texts. Whether texts are analyzed in terms of some elements of structure or a number of sentences (clauses) that can then be broken down into smaller units, a top-down analysis, or in terms of smaller units such as morphemes and words that can be put together to build the larger unit of text, a bottom-up analysis, we are still dealing with a formal/structural theory and approach to text analysis."

(Mohsen Ghadessy, "Textual Features and Contextual Factors for Register Identification." Text and Context in Functional Linguistics , ed. by Mohsen Ghadessy. John Benjamins, 1999)

Discourse Grammar

"An area of investigation within text linguistics , discourse grammar involves the analysis and presentation of grammatical regularities that overlap sentences in texts. In contrast to the pragmatically oriented direction of text linguistics, discourse grammar departs from a grammatical concept of text that is analogous to 'sentence.' The object of investigation is primarily the phenomenon of cohesion, thus the syntactic-morphological connecting of texts by textphoric, recurrence, and connective."

(Hadumod Bussmann, Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics . Translated and edited by Gregory P. Trauth and Kerstin Kazzazi. Routledge, 1996)

What Is Foregrounding?
What Is Parsing? Definition and Examples in English Grammar
Definition and Examples of Text in Language Studies
Definition and Examples of Linguists
Definition and Examples of Lexicography
Head (Words)
Defining Synchronic Linguistics
What Is Linguistic Functionalism?
What Is Textuality?
Definition and Examples of Corpora in Linguistics
Translation: Definition and Examples
Linguistic Performance

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As we have seen, thinking linguistically means studying language, and language use, not with the intention of making socially derived judgements about ‘correctness’, but in a spirit of pure enquiry. The pretensions of linguistics to be a science exist in the importance it places on developing just such a neutrally enquiring attitude.
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The Linguistics Program faculty recommends that students follow these guidelines when writing term papers for classes and when writing the M.A. essay. For in-text references, use the last name of the author (s) and year of publication, followed by a colon and page number (s) where necessary: (Chomsky 1999: 203-204).
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Different sections and issues of language make for interesting essay topics, for example, how language forms, the meaning of language, and language content. While these examples might seem straightforward and fairly easy when to read, developing a linguistic essay from them can be a challenge.
How to Write a Linguistics Essay | SpringerLink
Reading about the subject is OK but having to write something intelligible about it is another matter. All that terminology, those diagrams! Well it isn’t so difficult provided you bear in mind a few basic rules. It’s the purpose of this chapter to say what these are. Download to read the full chapter text.
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This chapter finds the philosophical arguments in favor of (explicit) propositional assumptions thin and unpersuasive whereas those against are powerful. The empirical evidence from psychology is decisive against them, given that linguistic competence is a skill and hence procedural knowledge.
Definition and Examples of Text Linguistics - ThoughtCo
Text linguistics is a branch of linguistics concerned with the description and analysis of extended texts (either spoken or written) in communicative contexts. Sometimes spelled as one word, textlinguistics (after the German Textlinguistik).