INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - WHAT IS LINGUISTICS?
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. There are many sub fields of linguistics. The interest in human language goes back as far as recorded history. The publication of Chomsky's Syntactic Structures in 1957 ushered in the current period of generative linguistics, the aims of which concern answers to three key questions: what constitutes knowledge of language (linguistic competence), how is the knowledge acquired and how is this knowledge put to use in linguistic performance?