BA Linguistics

The goal of linguistics is the enrichment of knowledge about the nature, grammar, and history of human language. Linguistics is a theoretical discipline, akin to philosophy, anthropology, and cognitive psychology. It is important for prospective students to understand that studying linguistics is not a matter of learning to speak many languages. Linguistics courses draw examples from the grammars of a wide variety of languages, and the more languages linguists know about in depth (as distinct from possessing fluency in the use of them), the more likely they are to discover universal properties. It is also possible to pursue these universal aspects of human language through the intensive indepth study of a single language. This accounts for the high proportion of examples from English and familiar European languages found in linguistics courses and research publications.