[]() 1: Only got a minute?

The use of language is an integral part of being human. Linguistics is the study of language, and how it works. This book explains the main design features of language, and shows how language differs from animal communication. Language is a patterned activity, which involves three major types of organization: sound patterns (phonology), word patterns (morphology and syntax) and meaning patterns (semantics). These three constitute the core of any language, sometimes known as the grammar. But beyond grammar, this book covers language usage and conversation (pragmatics), social variation within a language (sociolinguistics), language and mind (psycholinguistics), literary language (stylistics), language change (historical linguistics), types of language (typological linguistics). It also points out links with other disciplines, such as language teaching (applied linguistics), philosophy (philosophical linguistics), []()anthropology (anthropological linguistics), artificial intelligence (computational linguistics), and dictionary making (lexicography and terminology).