What are Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics?
Linguistics is the study of language in all its aspects. Linguists are interested in the structure and history of languages; the meaning underlying instances of language use (semantics); how languages are related; how children learn language; what goes on when people are speaking; how people understand, mentally represent and generate language; what features are shared by all languages; why languages differ; how language is used in literature, the media and by various social groups; what happens to language abilities when the brain is damaged by stroke or injury; whether computers will ever be able to understand language; how we can model human language use. In British English, Philology is often used to mean the historical study of language. Philologists study the development of individual languages but also want to know how languages evolve, whether there are rules of language change, how far change is determined by social and historical circumstances, etc. Comparative philology has
