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Linguistic Theories:
There are three major types of linguistic theories. They are:
1) Theoretical linguistics
2) Descriptive linguistics and
3) Experimental or applied linguistics.
Theoretical linguistics
Theoretical linguistics is the branch of linguistics that is most concerned with developing
models of linguistic knowledge. The fields that are generally considered the core of
theoretical linguistics are syntax, phonology, morphology, and semantics. Although phonetics often informs
phonology, it is often excluded from the purview of theoretical linguistics, along with
psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. Theoretical linguistics also involves the search for an
explanation of linguistic universals, that is, properties all languages have in common.
Under theoretical linguistics; we have sub-types:
1)
2)
3)
Cognitive linguistics
Generative linguistics
Functionalism or Functional theories of grammar
4) Quantitative linguistics:
Cognitive linguistics: cognitive linguistics (CL) refers to the branch of linguistics that
interprets language in terms of the concepts, sometimes universal, sometimes specific to a
particular tongue, which underlie its forms. It is thus closely associated with semantics but is
distinct from psycholinguistics, which draws upon empirical findings from cognitive
psychology in order to explain the mental processes that underlie the acquisition, storage,
production and understanding of speech and writing.
Cognitive linguistics is characterized by adherence to three central positions. First, it denies
that there is an autonomous linguistic faculty in the mind; second, it understands grammar in
terms of conceptualization; and third, it claims that knowledge of language arises out of
language use. In the 1970s and 1980s, a new school of thought known as cognitive
linguistics emerged as a reaction to generativist theory. Led by theorists such as Ronald Langacker
and George Lakoff, linguists working within the realm of cognitive linguistics propose that
language is an emergent property of basic, general-purpose cognitive processes, though
cognitive linguistics has also been the subject of much criticism. In contrast to the
generativist school of linguistics, cognitive linguistics is non-modularist and functionalist in
character. Important developments in cognitive linguistics include cognitive grammar, frame semantics,
and conceptual metaphor, all of which are based on the idea that form-function correspondences
based on representations derived from embodied experience constitute the basic units of language.
Because of its conviction that knowledge of language is learned through use, cognitive
linguistics is sometimes considered to be a functional approach, but it differs from other
functional approaches in that it is primarily concerned with how the mind creates meaning
through language, and not with the use of language as a tool of communication.
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Generative linguistics is a school of thought within linguistics that makes use of the concept of
a generative grammar. Generative grammar is defined as one that is fully explicit. It is a finite set
of rules that can be applied to generate all those and only those sentences (often, but not
necessarily, infinite in number) that are grammatical in a given language. This is the
definition that is offered by Noam Chomsky, who invented the term, and by most dictionaries of
linguistics.
The term generative grammar is also used to label the approach to linguistics taken by
Chomsky and his followers. Chomsky's approach is characterized by the use of transformational
grammar – a theory that has changed greatly since it was first promulgated by Chomsky in his
1957 book Syntactic Structures – and by the assertion of a strong linguistic nativism (and therefore an
assertion that some set of fundamental characteristics of all human languages must be the
same). The term "generative linguistics" is often applied to the earliest version of Chomsky's
transformational grammar, which was associated with a distinction between the "deep structure"
and "surface structure" of sentences.