Linguistics

The scientific study of human language — its structure, meaning, history, acquisition, use, and the cognitive and social systems that sustain it. Linguistics treats language as a natural object: every variety, from elite literary registers to under-documented village vernaculars and emergent sign languages, is data of equal evidential weight. The field combines formal modeling (logic, algebra, computation), empirical fieldwork (recordings, elicitation, corpora), experimental methods (psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics), and historical reconstruction.

Planned Subdomains

• Phonetics — physical production and perception of speech sounds (articulatory, acoustic, auditory)
• Phonology — sound systems and their abstract organization
• Morphology — internal structure of words; inflection, derivation, compounding
• Syntax — sentence structure; phrase composition; movement and dependency
• Semantics — meaning of words, phrases, sentences; truth conditions
• Pragmatics — meaning in context; speech acts, implicature, reference
• Sociolinguistics — variation by class, region, gender, ethnicity; language attitudes
• Psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics & language acquisition — done → psycholinguistics-and-acquisition: real-time processing/comprehension/production; brain bases of language (Broca, Wernicke, ERP, fMRI); L1 and L2 development; critical period
• Computational linguistics / NLP — done → computational-linguistics-and-nlp: parsing, embeddings, language models
• Historical linguistics — sound change, comparative method, reconstruction
• Typology — cross-linguistic patterns and universals
• Applied linguistics — language teaching, testing, policy, lexicography, forensic
• Sign languages — done → sign-language-linguistics: ASL, BSL, LSF; manual phonology and syntax
• Language documentation — endangered languages; archival linguistics

Tier 1 Status (8 of 8 complete)

• phonetics-and-phonology — speech sounds and sound systems
• syntax-and-grammar — sentence structure across frameworks
• semantics-and-pragmatics — meaning and use
• historical-linguistics-and-typology — change, families, universals
• sociolinguistics-and-applied — variation, society, application
• computational-linguistics-and-nlp — parsing, embeddings, language models, NLP
• psycholinguistics-and-acquisition — real-time processing, neurolinguistics (Broca, Wernicke, ERP, fMRI), L1/L2 acquisition, critical period
• sign-language-linguistics — ASL, BSL, LSF; manual phonology and syntax

Tier 2 — In progress

• formal-semantics-and-pragmatics-deep — Heim–Kratzer compositional semantics, type theory, intensionality, Gricean maxims, RT, presupposition projection

Tier 3 — Catalogs online

• Tier 3 index
• language-families-catalog — 20 sections from Indo-European through Khoisan-split, all major isolates, controversial macrofamilies, sign languages, pidgins/creoles (organized by genealogy)
• world-languages-oldest-to-living-catalog — actual languages by time and population: oldest attested (Sumerian ~3200 BCE →), ancient/classical, the top-40 living languages by speakers, endangerment/death, and revived/constructed languages
• major-living-languages-catalog — the full population roster: every living language with ≥~1M speakers (~350, ~95% of humanity), by family, with speakers/script/region
• ancient-and-extinct-languages-catalog — the historical depth: dead/classical/extinct languages by region and era, with attestation, script, decipherment status, and descendants
• languages-by-region-catalog — the geographic axis: the world’s languages by continent → country, with official/national languages, linguae francae, diversity hotspots, and colonial overlays
• script-and-writing-systems-catalog — the written record: independent inventions of writing, script typology, the alphabet’s genealogy, major living scripts, decipherment, and the undeciphered
• ipa-and-phonological-features-catalog — full IPA chart + SPE distinctive features
• syntactic-typology-features-catalog — WALS-style cross-linguistic feature catalog

Planned Tier 2 Deep Dives

• Formal Semantics Deep — full Heim-Kratzer compositional semantics; type theory; intensionality
• Syntax Frameworks Compared — Minimalism vs HPSG vs LFG vs CCG vs Dependency Grammar
• Generative Grammar and the Minimalist Program — Chomsky 1957–2020+ trajectory
• Lexical Semantics — sense, polysemy, WordNet, FrameNet, distributional methods
• Discourse Analysis — Conversation Analysis (Sacks-Schegloff-Jefferson), Centering Theory, RST

Planned Tier 3 Catalogs

• Language Families + Isolates — full Glottolog-aligned roster with speaker counts
• IPA Phonetic Chart Catalog — every symbol, place, manner, diacritic
• Syntactic Typology Features — WALS feature-by-feature reference

Adjacent

• Languages — programming languages and grammars for contrast with natural-language syntax
• transformer-architecture — substrate of modern NLP
• neuroscience-foundations — basis for neurolinguistics
• philosophy-of-mind-and-language — reference, meaning, intentionality
• cultural-anthropology — language as cultural practice
• ancient-history — written record and decipherment