#3 – What is Linguistics? 🤔

You might have heard the term “Linguistics” before, but do you know what it really is? 
It’s pretty cool! Let me tell you why… 🕶️

Linguistics is the scientific study of language, but not just one language - all languages.
It’s all about trying to understand how and why language works.

In the 1950s, Noam Chomsky put forward a theory that we’re born with an innate ability for language.
His argument? As children we’re exposed to a finite amount of language, but somehow we’re able to produce infinite amount of output very quickly. 👶

In layman’s terms, we’re not just imitating sentences we’ve heard before, we’re producing our own sentences that might never have been said by anyone, ever. 😲

What’s more - this happens all over the world, regardless of the language.  🇦🇺 🇫🇷 🇧🇷 🇨🇳 🇳🇦

Chomsky determined that we must be born with some innate mental system that enables us to learn language so quickly as children. He further proposed that there must be a set of rules to support this ability, and that all languages must have a set of rules in common. 💡

Linguistics is all about trying to work out what those rules are. 🔎

• Why does a combination of speech sounds create a word?

• Why do words have to combine in a particular order?

• Why is that order different in other languages?

• How does combining words lead to a bigger meaning?

• How do we interpret different meanings from the same sentence?

These are just some of the high-level questions that Linguistics is figuring out.
It’s pretty darn cool if you ask me. 🤓