1.

Definition
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Such study has, broadly
speaking, three aspects: language form, language meaning, and language in
context.
Linguistics analyzes human language as a system for relating sounds (or
signed gestures) and meaning. Phonetics studies acoustic and articulatory
properties of the production and perception of speech sounds and non-speech
sounds. The study of language meaning, on the other hand, deals with how
languages encode relations between entites, properties, and other aspects of the
world to convey, process, and assign meaning, as well as to manage and resolve
ambiguity. While the study of semantics typically concerns itself with truth
conditions, pragmatics deals with how context influences meanings.
a. Theoretical Linguistics
According to John Lyons, theoretical linguistics studies language and
languages with a view to constructing a theory of their structure and functions
and without regard to any practical applications that the investigation of language
and languages might have, whereas applied linguistics has as its concerns the
application of the concepts and findings of linguistics to a variety of practical
tasks, including language-teaching.
Theoretical linguistics is the branch of linguistics that is most concerned
with developing models of linguistic knowledge. The fields that are generally
considered the core of theoretical linguistics are syntax, phonology, morphology,
and semantics. Although phonetics often informs phonology, it is often excluded
from the purview of theoretical linguistics, along with psycholinguistics and
sociolinguistics. Theoretical linguistics also involves the search for an explanation
of linguistic universals, that is, properties all languages have in common.
Some linguists have said or implied that theoretical linguistics implies the
study of language in general, and that the study of particular languages does not
constitute a kind of theoretical scientific inquiry (i.e. that descriptive linguistics is
not a kind of theoretical linguistics). However, it is commonly agreed that it is

reasonable to say that constructing a description of a language is tantamount to

creating a theory of that language. Moreover, theoretical is a good term to be
used in contrast to applied.
Theoretical Linguistics examines a language at different levels of
analysis, i.e. its phonological system, articulation and perception of sounds
(phonetics), word formation (morphology) and phrases and sentences (syntax),
the meaning of linguistic expressions (semantics), and language use (pragmatics).
In the early days of the science, the chief concern of those involved was to
describe the different languages spoken throughout the world and to classify
them into typological groups. The conclusions drawn as a result of this painstaking
work were, unfortunately, limited to the production of descriptive conclusions,
and no answers were found to more fundamental questions which had been
posed since ancient times relating to the human mind (Aristotle, Plato). By the
mid 20th century, Theoretical Linguistics had adopted a more precise descriptive
approach and began to focus on interpreting data in order to attempt to answer
such questions as how humans acquire a language and the structure and function
of the human mind. It was the American linguist Noam Chomsky who led the
science down this route, establishing and developing contemporary linguistic
thinking under the umbrella of what is known as generative linguistics.
Major fields of Theoretical Linguistics
Phonetics
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds with concentration on three
main points :
Articulation : the production of speech sounds in human speech organs.
Perception : the way human ears respond to speech signals, how the
human brain analyses them.
Acoustic features : physical characteristics of speech sounds such as color,
loudness, amplitude, frequency etc.

 Phonology
Phonology is the study of language sounds. Phonology is divided into
two separate studies, phonetics and phonemics. Phonetics is what depicts
the sounds we hear. It calls attention to the smallest details in language
sounds. There are three kinds of phonetics: acoustic phonetics, auditory
phonetics, and articulatory phonetics. Acoustic phonetics deals with the
physical properties of sound, what sounds exactly are coming from the
person speaking. Auditory phonetics deals with how the sounds are
perceived, exactly what the person hearing the sounds is perceiving. Finally,
articulatory phonetics studies how the speech sounds are produced. This is
what describes the actual sounds in detail. It is also known as descriptive
phonetics.
Morphology
Morphology is the study of word structure. For example, in the
sentences The dog runs and The dogs run, the word forms runs and dogs
have an affix -s added, distinguishing them from the base forms dog and
run. Adding this suffix to a nominal stem gives plural forms, adding it to
verbal stems restricts the subject to third person singular. Some
morphological theories operate with two distinct suffixes -s, called
allomorphs of the morphemes Plural and Third person singular,
respectively. Languages differ with respect to their morphological structure.
Along one axis, we may distinguish analytic languages, with few or no
affixes or other morphological processes from synthetic languages with
many affixes. Along another axis, we may distinguish agglutinative
languages, where affixes express one grammatical property each, and are
added neatly one after another, from fusional languages, with nonconcatenative morphological processes (infixation, umlaut, ablaut, etc.)
and/or with less clear-cut affix boundaries.

 Syntax
Syntax is the study of language structure and phrasal hierarchies,
depicted in parse tree format. It is concerned with the relationship
between units at the level of words or morphology. Syntax seeks to
delineate exactly all and only those sentences which make up a given
language, using native speaker intuition. Syntax seeks to describe formally
exactly how structural relations between elements (lexical items/words and
operators) in a sentence contribute to its interpretation. Syntax uses
principles of formal logic and Set Theory to formalize and represent
accurately the hierarchical relationship between elements in a sentence.
Abstract syntax trees are often used to illustrate the hierarchical structures
that are posited. Thus, in active declarative sentences in English the subject
is followed by the main verb which in turn is followed by the object (SVO).
This order of elements is crucial to its correct interpretation and it is exactly
this which syntacticians try to capture. They argue that there must be a
formal computational component contained within the language faculty of
normal speakers of a language and seek to describe it.

Semantics
Semantics is the study of intension, that is, the intrinsic meanings of
words and phrases. Much of the work in the field of philosophy of language
is concerned with the relation between meanings and the world, and this
concern cross-cuts formal semantics in several ways. For example, both
philosophers of language and semanticists make use of propositional,
predicate and modal logics to express their ideas about word meaning.

b. Applied linguistics
Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field of linguistics that identifies,
investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems. Some of
the academic fields related to applied linguistics are education, psychology,
computer science, communication research, anthropology, and sociology.
Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field of linguistics. Major branches
of applied linguistics include bilingualism and multilingualism, computer-mediated
communication (CMC), conversation analysis, contrastive linguistics, sign
linguistics, language assessment, literacies, discourse analysis, language
pedagogy, second language acquisition, lexicography, language planning and
policy, interlinguistics, stylistics, pragmatics, forensic linguistics and translation.
Major journals of the field include Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Applied
Linguistics, International Review of Applied Linguistics, International Journal of
Applied Linguistics, Issues in Applied Linguistics, and Language Learning.
Applied Linguistics proposes new methods and approaches to a language
and offers support to the language community with any issue or problem it may
be facing relating to language. Depending on the area of application, Applied
Linguistics extends into such fields as: Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages
(developing foreign language teaching methods), Clinical Linguistics (analysis and
treatment of language disorders), Educational Linguistics (the use of the mother
tongue in school), Lexicography (methods and techniques for creating
dictionaries), Translation (methods for translating / rendering from one language
to another), Sociolinguistics (study of the link between language and society),
Psycholinguistics (relationship between language and human behaviour),
Computational Linguistics (the use of computers in language analysis and use),
etc.

2. The Relation between Theoretical Linguistics and Applied Linguistics

After read the definition, we can conclude that theoretical is more of the
study of linguistics and applied is the use of linguistics.
Theoretical linguistics is the study of phonology, morphology, syntax and
semantics. Applied linguistics is linguistics put to practical use such as the study of
language in the brain, translation, second language learning, studying linguistics in
social settings, and many other such uses.
Applied Linguistics is field of study that identifies, investigates, and offers
solutions to language related problems. Applied Linguistics describes the
language, and teaches how it is learned and used. It can be applied to all aspects
of language use.
Applied Linguistics builds on the findings of Theoretical Linguistics and,
combining its strengths with those of other sciences such as Psychology,
Mathematics, Sociology, etc. seeks to examine the circumstances under which a
language is acquired and used by a language community.