![]() It also provides answers regarding second-language learning and multilingualism. This latter field holds much promise for understanding individuals afflicted with aphasia and other communication disorders. ![]() For example, forensic linguistics provides insights into language, law, and crime neurolinguistics includes the relationships between language and the human nervous system. In the latter half of the 20th century, the pursuit of language understanding enhanced the identity of linguistics as a field constituted of several subfields, with each involving the study of specific human dimensions evidenced in language use. ![]() Those involved in comparative linguistics were close cousins to researchers in the current subfield of sociolinguistics, which attempts to understand language use and its social implications as well as the consequences of language and literacy development and education among citizens of world nations and societies within them. Comparative linguistics enabled scientists to look for patterns in spoken languages in order to find connections among them that might give some indication of evolution. Thus, there was a reliance on writings-as well as on the spoken word-as these survived and changed into modern eras. Much of the early linguistic research (i.e., up to the first half of the 20th century) was undertaken to find out about the speech of ancient peoples. Their studies provided historical perspectives about languages-classifying and categorizing them by phonology, morphology, and syntax (but not so much by semantics and pragmatics). ![]() Those who identified themselves as philologists were oftentimes recruits from the field of philosophy. Philology in the 1800s was the ancestor to general linguistics. Multiple views of language and linguistics support a richer perspective about the study of language and people than one that identifies linguistic methods only as tools to find out about culture. Current scholars cannot capture all the characteristics of language in just one definition or modality to designate linguistics as one singular field of study. In the 21st century, the methods of language study and characterizations of linguistics hardly resemble those of Boas and anthropologists in his era. The first cognitive revolution is a cognomen for the period between the 17th and early 19th centuries when classical thoughts and theories about language were proposed, especially by philosophers such as René Descartes, Gottfried Leibnitz, and Immanuel Kant. That changed dramatically in the latter half of the 20th century, particularly with the dynamic referred to by Noam Chomsky (2005) as the second cognitive revolution when the number of new research fields increased (e.g., cognitive psychology, computer science, artificial intelligence). However, for the time, descriptive structural linguistics was a significant advancement, albeit more of a part of anthropology rather than a separate field in itself. One can only imagine the kinds and degrees of meaning that are lost to us about peoples of the world due to the formal methods used in the study of language in the early 20th century and the relegation of language, as a research tool, as it was by Boas and Bloomfield. This sense of linguistics as a vehicle was shared by the students of Boas and became a primary interpretation for many years, especially through the influence of Leonard Bloomfield. His interpretation of language was, in the words of Michael Agar (1994), “just a ‘part’ of anthropological fieldwork, and the point of fieldwork was to get to culture” (p. For example, Franz Boas (1858–1942) used what became known as descriptive-structural linguistics in his studies of culture and anthropology in the early 20th century. Knowledge of the changes in perspective about language development provides one key to unlocking the door to characterize the nature of human beings as well as unlocking the door to the evolution and growth of societies. The reasons and methods for trying to understand language have changed from one historic era to the next, making scholarly activity in the field known as linguistics as vibrant as each era. Evidence from over 30,000 preserved cuneiform writings has consistently raised curiosity regarding the spoken language of the ancient Sumerians prior to 2000 BCE, as have discoveries regarding original language types from other indigenous peoples, such as the aborigines of Australia and New Guinea. Similar speculation was done in Europe among Greek philosophers at the time of Socrates and his followers. As far back as 1500 BCE, individuals in India speculated about language development, derivations, and use. Of the many areas of anthropology that entice researchers to study, language is one that draws significant and sustained attention.
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