Oh. I really don’t know what they’re working on lately.
Linguistics as an academic discipline is different from teaching or learning languages.
If you want to learn a language, you should learn a language. If, on the other hand, you are interested in linguistics, you should study linguistics. You can safely say that linguistics is what linguists have been doing, and that linguists are those who are interested in linguistics. (There is no accounting for tastes.)
I don’t think they’re the same thing. Not everybody dissects/looks at/studies animals but everyone talks. Biology has an important role in advancing us, whereas i don’t see what linguistics has ever done for anybody except linguists. To me it is a completely pointless area of study, but then so are a lot of professions.
I’m not talking from a purely ‘language learning’ stance in terms of speaking an L2 or whatever. Linguistics is the study of language. If it’s not done anything to help anyone speak, learn, write, read or use a language, then it’s pointless. Describing things is of no benefit to anyone except people who are interested in it. It’s got no real useful benefit at all from what i can see outside of helping a small handful of people learn dead or unscripted languages, which isn’t really of benefit to anyone except the tiny, miniscule handful of people who want to learn these. As far as regular languages go, linguistics is pointless.
Not sure what your comments about the middle ages are all about. If you don’t like what i’m saying try to prove me wrong instead of just coming out with some hot air.
Yes, i know that. My question was what has the academic discipline done for anyone? If its goal is to study language, then what is the end? What has it actually done except theorise things? Nothing, from what i can see. Yes, some ‘methods’ have come off the backs of these theories but all they have done is quantified what people have always done anyway. Even Krashen - some people who want to learn a language will read a lot. Giving it a name isn’t useful in my opinion.
For everything Chomsky has ever said, what positive impact has it had on anything? A kid will always learn the language it is presented with with zero conscious effort. So what difference has universal grammar or any of that had on anything except the scientific study of language itself?
To write studies about a science which is meant to do nothing except self-perpetuate the field its written for. That’s what linguistics is to me. And judging from the answers so far, not one person has come up with anything linguistics has done except help other linguists be linguists. Which isn’t actually useful at all.
You didn’t address my point. A large portion of science has no practical use. What is the point of paleontologists studying fossils millions of years old?
Who cares? That’s not what the discussion is about. ‘Linguistics is pointless.’ ‘Hey what about all that other pointless stuff?!’ is basically what you’ve just said.
So you actually think studying the common ancestor of humans and fish is pointless? If you truly think that, I won’t even bother arguing with you…
Hey, come on. I realized something I didn’t bevor. Gratulation, you have learnt 2000 words and another 5ooo words saved in French in a month! You’ve made a great experience you will never forget in your life. I think I know how you feel, I have made the same experience and it was so exiting. You are reading books in French and you get the contend and you can quote it.
The experiences of such moments in language learning are special ones. I remember when I had my break throughs. The joy I’ve had to understand the words in the songs I listened to, and I was proud. At that moment nobody had should come across with learning by other methods. The experience of learning by reading and listening to is so overwhelming.
And recently you’ve read the theories of Chomsky…!
With all that in mind I understand your emotions and questions and I would no more reply to your post the way I did because I think it was not the right moment. God bless you.
What? Where did i say that? I said we were talking about linguistics being pointless.
‘You said linguistics is pointless because it has no practical use.’
‘I think paleontology has no practical use.’
‘Therefore you think paleontology is pointless.’
Is what you’ve just done. Can you see where you went wrong? Probably best you do that whole not arguing with me thing.
Good night. 
PS you must have trouble reading because you missed this ‘Biology has an important role in advancing us’. See yourself out.
Sorry this makes no sense but i suspect you’re trolling me as your English has just gotten really bad all of a sudden, when usually it’s very good?
Honestly, I am not at all trying to roll you. I respect you. I dont even know you but it does not matter. I just tried to unterstand you, so I think you are a fighter. Why do I think so? I noticed you did a huge effort to learn French. You looks like to be determined.
I am going to risk something writting that way. Maybe I am wrong. I dont know but I think it’s worth doing it.
“your english has just gotten really bad all of a sudden, when usually it’s very good.”
Thank you for complimenting my “usually very good” english. It’s good to hear it.
Yesterday evening I was very, very tired. Thus I wrote english the way I speak German. I think especially the last sentences are awkward.
Are you really decided to learn French? I offer you 3 months on lingQ for learning French.
I pay the bill.
What’s my advantage? Nothing but the joy of helping somebody.
I don’t feel like dealing with your defense mechanisms. I’ll give you one more chance to reply with something meaningful.
Oh well no worries and thanks for your kind words. Yes, your English is very good usually.
It’s kind of you to offer that but it’s ok - i’m currently learning with a program which is similar to lingq and the main reason i signed up here in the first place was to check out the beta Norwegian. I like the program a lot but the main reason i don’t want to sign up right now is because i’d have to go through lingqing all the words i already know!!!
I live in France and have done since November so i’m eager to learn. I think it’s a beautiful language - the way opinions are expressed is really nice and i can’t explain why, i just love the way the language works. It zlso helps that most of the vocabulary is at least partially recognisable for an English speaker.
I first started learning German in 2014 because we were going to move there after university but decided France fit our needs better - and after learning German for a year French seems a doddle, especially the grammar.
Anyway, thanks again for your kind offer but i will decline out of humility and respect for you!
Cheers
You’re welcome. Good luck to you.
Noam Chomsky on Language Aquisition
The Concept of Language (Noam Chomsky)
Noam Chomsky on Linguistics
Noam Chomsky - Ideas of Chomsky BBC Interview (full)
+platyphilla
You don’t have to “lingq the words you know”!
Just read through the text, lingq the words you don’t know and press the “I know all other blue words” button
It is not clear to me that abstract academic linguistics has contributed or will contribute positively to society in any signficant way. It may be that some computer software has been based on the work of linguists but I have no idea. Also, another possible influence of linguistics is in education: the subject might be responsible for attracting students to universities who have then gone on to apply the skills they learned outside of linguistics to other useful things.
I certainly don’t think language learning has ever been influenced by the work of Chomsky and his colleagues and I doubt it ever will be. I doubt there is much that any academic study of how the human brain works could do to improve how people learn languages other than maybe indirectly through its contribution to some future computer technology.
Let us say, for the sake of argument, that academic linguistics is irrelevant just as the original poster claims. Is this a criticism of linguistics? Not necessarily. It is not, and it shouldn’t be, the aim of all academic subjects to improve the lives of other humans. A lot of academic subjects are simply aimed at improving our understanding of how we work and how the universe works, and if practical applications of the subject emerge from this better understanding then this is a bonus. For a lot of people, a better understanding of the world is a good enough justification for something to be done. A lot of people will see such subjects as being irrelevant.
I cannot agree though that academic subjects that improve our understanding of the world, including ourselves of course, should ever been considered irrelevant from a practical perspective. The history of science and the development of modern technology is full of stories of people doing research into technical and abstract subjects simply for the purpose of understanding the subject better only for the knowledge they developed to then become an essential part of some future technology that changed the world. We tend to look at these people as heros and visionaries and we laugh at their contemporaries who thought their work was irrelevant because they were too closed minded to understand its importance. Yet, in many of these cases, it would have been completely unclear, and to some extent irrelevant, to the people doing the research that their work would someday become of immense practical importance. The fact that it did was unforseeable at the time that the work was being done, both by the people doing the work and the people who thought it was irrelevant.
Modern technology, and especially computer technology, is improving extremely rapidly and it is pretty clear that it is nowhere near its full potential. There will most likely be revolutionary advances in computer technology that will improve the lives of everybody on the planet and we have currently no way of predicting what these advances will be or where they will come from. Do we know now that some future detailed understanding of how humans produce and interact with language won’t provide an essential ingredient to some future technology that will allow us to interact with computers in ways that are far superior to what we can do now? No way do we know that.
I couldn’t agree more.
@platy.,…
Judging by your first and other postings here you just like discussing.
That’s why I don’t want to discuss to you, it’s no use of it.
I just give my opinion on the topic.
The linguistics studies the history and the function of the languages. It helps us to see the connections between the languages, the meanings of the words and word combinations.
The linguists make different dictionaries, describe the main rules of each language.
I believe this science is as important as other sciences.
Mathematics and Physics are as useless for you as a linguastics if you don’t interested in respective sciences.
But I see you would like to receive from the linguistics the “magic key” to know suddenly a new language.
It’s impossible. You must have a big motiviation and make a lot of efforts to acquire a new language.
The linguistics is not guilty if you perhaps don’t want to work hard at the language.
If you don’t like linguistics, just drink your tea and don’t read something about the languages.
And if someone would like to know more about the target language, let him/her read what he/she would like to read!!!