Editing Social science (section)

===Linguistics===
{{Main|Linguistics|Outline of linguistics}}
[[File:Ferdinand de Saussure.jpg|thumb|right|[[Ferdinand de Saussure]], recognized as the father of modern [[linguistics]]]]
Linguistics investigates the cognitive and social aspects of human language. The field is divided into areas that focus on aspects of the linguistic signal, such as [[syntax]] (the study of the rules that govern the structure of sentences), [[semantics]] (the study of meaning), [[morphology (linguistics)|morphology]] (the study of the structure of words), [[phonetics]] (the study of speech sounds) and [[phonology]] (the study of the abstract sound system of a particular language); however, work in areas like [[evolutionary linguistics]] (the study of the origins and evolution of language) and [[psycholinguistics]] (the study of psychological factors in human language) cut across these divisions.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Anonymous |date=2022-03-02 |title=What is Linguistics? {{!}} linguistics |url=https://linguistics.ucdavis.edu/what-linguistics |access-date=2024-07-13 |website=linguistics.ucdavis.edu |language=en}}</ref>

The overwhelming majority of modern research in linguistics takes a predominantly [[wikt:synchronic|synchronic]] perspective (focusing on language at a particular point in time), and a great deal of it—partly owing to the influence of [[Noam Chomsky]]—aims at formulating theories of the cognitive processing of language. However, language does not exist in a vacuum, or only in the brain, and approaches like contact linguistics, [[Creole language|creole]] studies, [[discourse analysis]], social interactional linguistics, and [[sociolinguistics]] explore language in its social context. Sociolinguistics often makes use of traditional quantitative analysis and statistics in investigating the frequency of features, while some disciplines, like contact linguistics, focus on qualitative analysis. While certain areas of linguistics can thus be understood as clearly falling within the social sciences, other areas, like [[acoustic phonetics]] and [[neurolinguistics]], draw on the natural sciences. Linguistics draws only secondarily on the humanities, which played a rather greater role in linguistic inquiry in the 19th and early 20th centuries. [[Ferdinand Saussure]] was one of the founders of 20th century linguistics.<ref>Justin Wintle, ''Makers of modern culture'', Routledge, 2002, p. 467.</ref><ref>David Lodge, Nigel Wood, ''Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader'', Pearson Education, 2008, p. 42.</ref><ref>Thomas, Margaret. 2011. Fifty Key Thinkers on Language and Linguistics. Routledge: London and New York. p. 145 ff.</ref><ref>Chapman, S. and C. Routledge. 2005. Key Thinkers in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language. Edinburgh University Press. p.241 ff.</ref>