Editing Outline of linguistics (section)

==The placement of linguistics within broader frameworks==
{{See also|Outline of academic disciplines|Linguistics#Nomenclature}}

Linguistics can be described as an [[academic discipline]] and, at least in its theoretical subfields, as a [[Fields of science|field of science]],<ref name="crystal"/> being a widely recognized category of specialized expertise, embodying its own terminology, nomenclature, and [[scientific journal]]s. Many linguists, such as David Crystal, conceptualize the field as being primarily scientific.<ref name="crystal">{{Cite book|title=Linguistics|last=Crystal|first=David|publisher=Penguin Books|year=1990|isbn=978-0-14-013531-2|author-link=David Crystal}}</ref>

Linguistics is a [[Interdisciplinarity|multi-disciplinary]] field of research that combines tools from [[natural science]]s, [[social science]]s, [[formal science]]s, and the [[humanities]].<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8nc6nRRbMSQC&pg=PA13|title=The Handbook of Educational Linguistics|last1=Spolsky|first1=Bernard|last2=Hult|first2=Francis M.|date=February 2010|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|isbn=978-1-4443-3104-2|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EUMqGSbeEXAC&pg=PA23|title=Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics|last=Berns|first=Margie|date=20 March 2010|publisher=Elsevier|isbn=978-0-08-096503-1|pages=23–25|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/science-linguistics|title=The Science of Linguistics|website=Linguistic Society of America|access-date=17 April 2018|quote=Modern linguists approach their work with a scientific perspective, although they use methods that used to be thought of as solely an academic discipline of the humanities. Contrary to previous belief, linguistics is multidisciplinary. It overlaps each of the human sciences including psychology, neurology, anthropology, and sociology. Linguists conduct formal studies of sound structure, grammar and meaning, but they also investigate the history of language families, and research language acquisition.}}</ref><ref name="essays">Behme, Christina; Neef, Martin. ''[https://philarchive.org/rec/PITWKO Essays on Linguistic Realism]'' (2018). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 7–20</ref>

Historically, there has been some lack of consensus on the [[Outline of academic disciplines|disciplinary classification]] of linguistics, particularly [[theoretical linguistics]]. Linguistic [[Philosophical realism|realists]] viewed linguistics as a formal science; linguistic [[nominalists]] (the [[Structuralism (psychology)|American structuralists]]) viewed linguistics as an empirical or even physical science; linguistic [[conceptualist]]s viewed linguistics as a branch of psychology and therefore a social science; others yet have argued for viewing linguistics as a mixed science.<ref name="essays"/>

Linguistics is heterogeneous in its methods of research, so that each area of theoretical linguistics may resemble [[Methodology|methodologically]] either formal science or empirical science, to different degrees. For example, [[phonetics]] uses empirical approaches to study the physical [[acoustics]] of [[spoken language]]. On the other hand, [[Semantics|semantically]] and [[Grammar|grammatically]], the usability of a [[Formal language|formal]] or [[Natural language|natural]] language is dependent on a formal and arbitrary [[axiom]]atization of rules or norms. Furthermore, as studied in [[pragmatics]] and [[semiotics]], linguistic meaning is influenced by social context.<ref name="essays"/>

To enable communication by upholding a [[Lexical semantics|lexico-semantic]] norm, the speakers of a shared language need to agree on the meaning of a [[sequence]] of [[phoneme]]s; for instance, "aunt" ([[Help:IPA/English|/æ/, /n/, /t/]]) would be acknowledged to signify "parent's sister or parent's sister-in-law", instead of "drummer" or "guest". Likewise, grammatically, it may be necessary for the interlocutors to agree on the [[Morphology (linguistics)|morphological]] and [[Syntax|syntactic]] properties of the sequence; say, that the sequence (/æ/ , /n/, /t/) would be treated as a singular [[noun]] convertible morphologically to [[Grammatical number|plurality]] by the addition of the [[suffix]] [[Wiktionary:-s#English|-s]], or that as a noun it must not be [[Grammatical modifier|modified syntactically]] by an [[adverb]] (for instance, "Let's call our immediately aunt" would thus be recognized as a grammatically incoherent structure, in a manner similar to a [[Undefined (mathematics)|mathematically undefined]] expression).