La lingüística (del francés linguistique; este de linguiste, «lingüista» y aquel del latín "lingua", «lengua») es el estudio científico tanto de la estructura de las lenguas naturales y de aspectos relacionados con ellas como de su evolución histórica, de su estructura interna y del conocimiento que los hablantes poseen de su propia lengua (esto último es particularmente cierto en el enfoque generativista). Si bien la gramática es un estudio antiguo, el enfoque no tradicional de la lingüística moderna tiene varias fuentes. Una de las más importantes la constituyen los Neogrammatiker, que inauguraron la lingüística histórica e introdujeron la noción de ley en el contexto de la lingüística y que en particular formularon diversas leyes fonéticas para representar el cambio lingüístico. Otro punto importante son los términos de sincronía, diacronía y las nociones estructuralistas popularizadas por el trabajo de Ferdinand de Saussure y el Cours de linguistique générale (inspirado en sus lecciones). A partir de esa época parece haberse generalizado el uso de la palabra «lingüística» (la primera aparición de la palabra registrada es de 1883[cita requerida]). La palabra «lingüista» se encuentra por primera vez en la página 1 del tomo I de la obra Choix des poésies des troubadours, escrita en 1816 por Raynouard.

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Linguistics is the scientific study of language, specifically language form, language meaning, and language in context. The earliest activities in the description of language have been attributed to the 4th century BCE Indian grammarian Pāṇini, who was an early student of linguistics and wrote a formal description of the Sanskrit language in his Aṣṭādhyāyī. Linguistics analyses human language as a system for relating sounds (or signs in signed languages) and meaning. Phonetics studies acoustic and articulatory properties of the production and perception of speech sounds and non-speech sounds. The study of language meaning, on the other hand, deals with how languages encode relations between entities, properties, and other aspects of the world to convey, process, and assign meaning, as well as to manage and resolve ambiguity. While the study of semantics typically concerns itself with truth conditions, pragmatics deals with how context influences meanings. Grammar is a system of rules which govern the form of the utterances in a given language. It encompasses both sound and meaning, and includes phonology (how sounds or gestures function together), morphology (the formation and composition of words), and syntax (the formation and composition of phrases and sentences from words). In the early 20th century, Ferdinand de Saussure distinguished between the notions of langue and parole in his formulation of structural linguistics. According to him, parole is the specific utterance of speech, whereas langue refers to an abstract phenomenon that theoretically defines the principles and system of rules that govern a language. This distinction resembles the one made by Noam Chomsky between competence and performance, where competence is individual's ideal knowledge of a language, while performance is the specific way in which it is used. The formal study of language has also led to the growth of fields like psycholinguistics, which explores the representation and function of language in the mind; neurolinguistics, which studies language processing in the brain; and language acquisition, which investigates how children and adults acquire a particular language. Linguistics also includes non-formal approaches to the study of other aspects of human language, such as social, cultural, historical and political factors. The study of cultural discourses and dialects is the domain of sociolinguistics, which looks at the relation between linguistic variation and social structures, as well as that of discourse analysis, which examines the structure of texts and conversations. Research on language through historical and evolutionary linguistics focuses on how languages change, and on the origin and growth of languages, particularly over an extended period of time. Corpus linguistics takes naturally occurring texts and studies the variation of grammatical and other features based on such corpora. Stylistics involves the study of patterns of style: within written, signed, or spoken discourse. Language documentation combines anthropological inquiry with linguistic inquiry to describe languages and their grammars. Lexicography covers the study and construction of dictionaries. Computational linguistics applies computer technology to address questions in theoretical linguistics, as well as to create applications for use in parsing, data retrieval, machine translation, and other areas. People can apply actual knowledge of a language in translation and interpreting, as well as in language education – the teaching of a second or foreign language. Policy makers work with governments to implement new plans in education and teaching which are based on linguistic research. Areas of study related to linguistics include semiotics (the study of signs and symbols both within language and without), literary criticism, translation, and speech-language pathology.

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