Linguistics
The scientific study of human language — its structure, meaning, history, acquisition, use, and the cognitive and social systems that sustain it. Linguistics treats language as a natural object: every variety, from elite literary registers to under-documented village vernaculars and emergent sign languages, is data of equal evidential weight. The field combines formal modeling (logic, algebra, computation), empirical fieldwork (recordings, elicitation, corpora), experimental methods (psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics), and historical reconstruction.
Planned Subdomains
- Phonetics — physical production and perception of speech sounds (articulatory, acoustic, auditory)
- Phonology — sound systems and their abstract organization
- Morphology — internal structure of words; inflection, derivation, compounding
- Syntax — sentence structure; phrase composition; movement and dependency
- Semantics — meaning of words, phrases, sentences; truth conditions
- Pragmatics — meaning in context; speech acts, implicature, reference
- Sociolinguistics — variation by class, region, gender, ethnicity; language attitudes
- Psycholinguistics — processing, comprehension, production in real time
- Neurolinguistics — brain bases of language (Broca, Wernicke, ERP, fMRI)
- Computational linguistics / NLP — parsing, embeddings, language models
- Historical linguistics — sound change, comparative method, reconstruction
- Typology — cross-linguistic patterns and universals
- Applied linguistics — language teaching, testing, policy, lexicography, forensic
- Language acquisition — L1 and L2 development; critical period
- Sign languages — ASL, BSL, LSF; manual phonology and syntax
- Language documentation — endangered languages; archival linguistics
Tier 1 Status (5 of 5 complete)
- phonetics-and-phonology — speech sounds and sound systems
- syntax-and-grammar — sentence structure across frameworks
- semantics-and-pragmatics — meaning and use
- historical-linguistics-and-typology — change, families, universals
- sociolinguistics-and-applied — variation, society, application
Tier 2 — In progress
- formal-semantics-and-pragmatics-deep — Heim–Kratzer compositional semantics, type theory, intensionality, Gricean maxims, RT, presupposition projection
Tier 3 — Catalogs online
- Tier 3 index
- language-families-catalog — 20 sections from Indo-European through Khoisan-split, all major isolates, controversial macrofamilies, sign languages, pidgins/creoles
Planned Tier 2 Deep Dives
- Formal Semantics Deep — full Heim-Kratzer compositional semantics; type theory; intensionality
- Syntax Frameworks Compared — Minimalism vs HPSG vs LFG vs CCG vs Dependency Grammar
- Generative Grammar and the Minimalist Program — Chomsky 1957–2020+ trajectory
- Lexical Semantics — sense, polysemy, WordNet, FrameNet, distributional methods
- Discourse Analysis — Conversation Analysis (Sacks-Schegloff-Jefferson), Centering Theory, RST
Planned Tier 3 Catalogs
- Language Families + Isolates — full Glottolog-aligned roster with speaker counts
- IPA Phonetic Chart Catalog — every symbol, place, manner, diacritic
- Syntactic Typology Features — WALS feature-by-feature reference
Adjacent
- Languages — programming languages and grammars for contrast with natural-language syntax
- transformer-architecture — substrate of modern NLP
- neuroscience-foundations — basis for neurolinguistics
- philosophy-of-mind-and-language — reference, meaning, intentionality
- cultural-anthropology — language as cultural practice
- ancient-history — written record and decipherment