The University of the West Indies, Mona

The questions that linguists ask are such as the following:

How do linguistic structures relate to the sounds we utter, and how do these relate to the meaning that we express?

What is the structure of these sounds, and how are they articulated?

How can children master language as quickly as they do, even though the number of sentences in a language appears to be infinitely many?

What does this remarkable capacity tell us about the mind?

How does human language differ from the communication systems of animals?

How does language change through time?

By what process does a language diverse into two mutually incomprehensible languages, as did Latin into Rumanian and French and Proto-Arawak into Garifuna and modern Arawak?

How can the prehistory of a language be reconstructed?

The Linguistics Department is concerned with these as with related, more practical questions:

How can a language best be taught and learned?

How can it best be translated?

What is involved in the ability to read and write?

How does one invent a practical orthography (alphabet and spelling system) for a language?

How does language relate to other facets of culture and society?

What sorts of problems develop when language doesn't work as it should, such as in various language disorders?

How do computer scientists use linguistic descriptions for natural language understanding systems?

The department offers majors and minors in the study of linguistics