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Overview

Language is the principal means by which human beings communicate thoughts and emotions. It is an obvious and important window through which human beings can try to understand themselves and to learn about the brain and the mind. In Linguistics we study the properties of languages and in so doing determine what all human beings know when they know a language, what Language is, and what ways languages, and thus human beings, are similar and different.

There are many different aspects of Language and languages that need to be understood and studied.

Subdisciplines

Phonetics examines and classifies the types of sounds found only in human languages, how the vocal tract is used to create these sounds, and what the physical and acoustic properties of these sounds are.

Phonology focusses on the inventories of sounds found in languages, asking what kinds of sounds have similar properties, how sounds can change in different contexts, how sounds are used to distinguish meaning, and what kinds of limits there are on the combinations of sounds in words.

Morphology considers how words are formed, what the smallest meaningful units of language are, and what the internal structure of words is.

How words are put together to form sentences is the principle focus of Syntax, a subdiscipline which examines those properties of words which determine their role in sentences, the relations between different elements of sentences, and what kind of meaning is conveyed by sentence structure itself.

Semantics focusses on how language conveys meaning in words and their components, in relations between and among words, in sentences and their structures, and in discourse patterns.

In addition to these core subdisciplines, there are other areas of Linguistics. Historical Linguistics considers how and why languages change through time, what the origin of language might be, and how to reconstruct languages which are no longer living.

Psycholinguistics examines how cognition and language are related, how we produce and understand spoken and written language, how children and adults learn language, and what kinds of pathologies affect language use.

Sociolinguistics studies the way language is used by speakers, the different dialects of languages, and how and why different social contexts, such as gender or class differences, affect language use.

Anthropological Linguistics focusses on the relation between language and culture, to what extent language affects our view of the world, and to what extent our culture shapes the language that we use.

Lastly, Applied Linguistics considers how linguistics can be used to contribute to the teaching and learning of languages. Click here for more Applied Linguistics information pages.

Please visit UVic's official course calendar for specific course information. For additional information not covered in the calendar, please contact the Linguistics office.

Please visit the coursework index for current coursework materials available from this site.