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Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast, where I read random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice.

I'm your host, Benjamin Boster, and today's episode is from a Wikipedia article titled

Linguistics.

Linguistics is the scientific study of language.

The areas of linguistics analysis are syntax, rules governing the structure of sentences,

semantics, meaning, morphology, structure of words, phonetics, speech sounds and equivalent

gestures and sign languages, phonology, the abstract sound system of a particular language, an analogous system

of sign languages, and pragmatics, how the context of use contributes to meaning.

Subdisciplines such as biolinguistics, the study of biological variables and evolution of language,

and psycholinguistics, the study of psychological factors in human language,

bridge many of these divisions.

Linguistics encompasses many branches and subfields that span both theoretical and practical applications.

Theoretical linguistics, including traditional descriptive linguistics,

is concerned with understanding the universal and fundamental nature of language

and developing a general theoretical framework for describing it.

Applied linguistics seeks to utilize the scientific findings of the study of language for practical purposes,

such as developing methods of improving language education and literacy.

Linguistics features may be studied through a variety of perspectives,

synchronically, by describing the structure of a language at a specific point in time,

or diachronically through the historical development of a language over a period

of time. In monolinguals, or in multilinguals, among children or among adults, in terms of how it

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