Macro and Micro Linguistics
Micro linguistics adopts the narrow view of language and is concerned with the structures of the language scheme in itself as well as for itself. Some of the aspects of micro linguistics consist of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, as well as pragmatics. The aforementioned aspects are covered in sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and computational linguistics. To begin with, phonetics is recognized as the scientific study of speech sounds, which studies the way speech sounds are articulated, transmitted, as well as received. The preceding aspect is covered in sociolinguistics where individuals understand the correlation existing between language and a specific society (Muñoz Luna, 2016). In this case, the branch indicates the way language use is influenced with social aspects including ethnicity, social class, age, and gender. Precisely, sociolinguistics affects people’s speech sound and the way they articulate, transmit, and receive sound.
Phonology is the study on the way speech sounds function in a language. Specifically, it studies the way speech sounds are organized and this is observed as the functional phonetics of a specific language. In this case, sociolinguistics plays a vital role in covering the aspect. In particular, this associated with dialect, which shows the way language is variant from one variety to the other in the same language. On the same note, morphology is the study of the formation of words (Armstrong, 2005). Notably, this is a branch of linguistics that breaks words into morphemes. It is regarded as the grammar of words and this is connected to historical linguistics. Specifically, historical linguistics depicts the study of grammatical changes as well as the reconstruction of earlier stages of language, which is connected to morphology.
Syntax is an important micro linguistic aspect that deals with the combination of words into phrases, sentences, as well as clauses. In particular, this is the grammar of sentence construction. The aspect is covered in historical linguistics in different ways. The aforementioned macro linguistics plays a vital role in describing as well as accounting for observed changes in a specific language (Armstrong, 2005). Therefore, syntax is covered in historical linguistics in phonological, semantic, grammatical transformations, not forgetting early stages of language construction. Simply put, this is shown in the discovery as well as application of the preceding methods where genetic correlations are used in different languages.
Semantics is a micro linguistics aspect that deals with the study of meaning in all its formal factors. Specifically, the words have different meanings and this is covered in computational linguistics. The aforementioned macro linguistics handles the construction model for language that plays a vital role in allowing for goals including language machine translation or artificial intelligence simulation (Muñoz Luna, 2016). In particular, it deals with understanding written as well as spoken language from a computational view and establishing artifacts that generate and process language.
Lastly, pragmatics is a significant micro linguistics aspect that is defined as the study of language in use in context. Specifically, this is covered in computational language where language is considered a mirror of mind and this offers insight into both intelligence and thinking. In this context, computers play an integral part in facilitating people’s interactions with machines as well as software of all sorts and put at their fingertips in ways that meet their needs. In simple terms, the aforementioned micro linguistics aspects are well covered in the macro linguistics branches.