语言学(linguistics)
对语言的性质和结构的研究。语言学既可用共时的方法（即描写一特定时间的某一特定语言）来研究，也可用历时的方法（即透过历史追溯语言的发展）来研究。西元前5世纪的希腊哲学家们是最早关注语言理论的人，他们对人类语言的起源进行争辩。西元前1世纪狄奥尼修斯.特拉克斯（Dionysius Thrax）编撰了第一部完整的希腊语语法书，成为罗马语法学家的楷模，而这些罗马语法学家的着作又成为中世纪和文艺复兴时期的当地语法的基础。19世纪由於历史语言学的兴起，语言学成为一门科学。19世纪末和20世纪初，索绪尔建立了一支语言学的结构语言学派，分析了真正的语法以了解语言的基础结构。1950年代，乔姆斯基挑战了这种结构语言学方法，主张语言学家应该研究操本族语者对自己语言之本能条件下的熟悉状况（语言能力），而不是探索操该语者对语言的实际产生的效果（语言行为），他还发展了衍生语法。
English version：
linguistics
Study of the nature and structure of language. Linguists use a synchronic (describing a language as it exists at a given time) or a diachronic (tracing a language's development through its history) approach to language study. Greek philosophers in the 5th century BC who debated the origins of human language were the first in the West to be concerned with linguistic theory. The first complete Greek grammar, written by Dionysus Thrax in the 1st century BC, was a model for Roman grammarians, whose work led to the medieval and Renaissance vernacular grammars. With the rise of historical linguistics in the 19th century, linguistics became a science. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Ferdinand de Saussure established the structuralist school of linguistics, which analyzed actual speech to learn about the underlying structure of language. In the 1950s, Noam Chomsky challenged the structuralist approach, arguing that linguistics should study native speakers' unconscious knowledge of their own language (competence), not their actual production of language (performance), and developed generative grammar.