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Unit 1: Introduction to Linguistics: Its Aspects



        way language is the expression of human thought, and all thought is expressed through language,  Notes
        hence all knowledge of the universe may fall within the scope of linguistics, and the scope may be
        a complex mess.














                                            Figure 1.1

        Yet linguistics being a science, has got to be a systematic discipline. So the questions: what kind of
        behaviour does the linguist want to investigate? or what is the scope of linguistics?—need to be
        answered. A linguist has to study and describe language which is an enormously complex
        phenomenon. He, therefore, concentrates at any one time on one of the many different, though
        interrelated, aspects of his subject matter. His subject matter, broadly speaking, is the data of
        language, or the facts of language as it is spoken and written.
        A full understanding of the various components of language and their relations with the rest of
        the world outside language, thus, would constitute the right scope of linguistics, which can roughly
        be represented by the figure 1.2 borrowed from Jean Aitchison:





           PSYCHOLOGY                          SOCIO                   SOCIOLOGY
                                         LINGUISTICS
                            PHYCHO                          LINGUISTICS
                              LINGUISTICS




                                        PHONOLOGY
                                  S           E AND  PHONETICS  ARD    ANTHROPOLOGY


                                         TEACHING  S    GRAMMAR      T    PHILOSOPHY
                                                                            C
           LANGUAGES                                    M  A   N




           COMMUNICATION                             I
           ENGINEERING                                                 LITERATURE







                                            Figure 1.2
        Thus general linguistics covers a wide range of topics and its boundaries are difficult to define. In
        the centre is phonetics, the study of human speech sounds. A phonetician is concerned with the


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