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Unit 2: Linguistics: Branches and Tools

in finding out the history of human language. Is man an ape that can do a little better? Is there any Notes
difference between human communication system and animal communication? If there is any
difference, what is the nature of this difference? Do animals have brain? Answer to questions like
these can be found out through collaboration between the biologist and the linguist.
Language is speech uttered out of mouth. Hence the answers to questions like—how are sounds
produced? How does the wind come out of the lungs through the windpipe to the vocal cords to
pass through the mouth or nasal passage? How do various speech organs such as vocal cords, soft
palate, tongue, teeth, lips, etc. affect the sound?—are of primary interest and investigation for the
linguist. He can find out answers to such questions from the biologist.
Science has contributed a great deal to the methodology of linguistics. It has formalized it; it has
made it much more rigorous, objective and scientific. It has helped the linguist to describe language
too. Yet in its methodology, linguistics is ‘intermediate’ between the natural and social sciences.
This is because of the subject matter of linguistics which is complicated and full of many variables.
Predictions of the linguist are not exactly like those of the natural scientist. Linguistics may,
therefore, be compared with geology rather than with chemistry or physics in matter of approach
and methodology.
2.2.7 Linguistics and Logic and Mathematics
Like philosophers, mathematicians and logicians are also interested in finding out what the
fundamental entities of language are, what operations are performed, what relations exist between
such entities in a proposition, what the rules of formation and transformation of these propositions
are, and how universal the validity of these proposition is. Answers to such questions and the
logical structure of the sentences of a language have also been a matter of interest and investigation
for linguists. Transformational-Generative grammar of Chomsky is a chemical mixture of linguistics,
logic, mathematics and psychology.
Whereas logic is mainly interpretative and explanatory, linguistics is mainly descriptive. Yet mere
descriptions do not help the linguist; he needs explanatory adequacy too. This he can get from
logic. Similarly logic is also indebted to linguistics. It is carried on with the help of language,
hence it has to keep a sharp scientific eye on the use of words and sentences.
2.2.8 Linguistics and Communications Engineering
Linguistics can help the communications engineer in understanding the linguistic nature of his
material to be transmitted. The linguist can also help us to estimate the value of the different
phonetic components in the sound wave which result from successive speech articulations, and
their localization into different band of frequencies.

Communications Engineering is concerned with the transmission of speech as
such by wire and radio waves, and conversion of linguistic signals into written
message.

Mechanical analysis of speech by instruments such as spectograph, taperecorder, gramophone,
radio, television, telephone may help a linguist a great deal. For example, Charles Fries studied
American living usage by bugging telephones. All these are the gifts of communications engineering.
Invention of ‘machine translation’ is the work of the linguist-engineer. Further linguistic analysis,
semantic, collocational, and grammatical that is involved in the process of translation, may make
this machine more useful and applicable than it is in its present form.
Linguistics is a developing science these days. It is achieving a significant position in various
ways. Further linguistic researches may open new avenues for the application of linguists. The
speech therapist, the language teacher, the literary artist, the psychologist, the neurologist, the
historian, the anthropologist, the sociologist, the geographer, the palaeographist, the missionary,

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