Description of the Current Collection Linguistics as a discipline is concerned with discovering the principles in terms of which natural languages are organized, and applying these principles to the description of individual languages. As a discipline it has applications to education, speech therapy, communication and computer science. The collection is seen as a solid undergraduate collection with emphasis on first language acquisition, semantics, morphology, phonetics, phonology and syntax. Journals are essential for research in this field but due to the high expense of subscription costs and the long-range commitment made to each title, these materials are acquired very selectively. Related Collections at York As mentioned before, linguistics as a discipline interacts with other subjects in the humanities, social sciences and sciences.
Material is selected and funded by the bibliographer appropriate to the discipline.
For example, anthropological linguistics, animal communication, neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics are selected and funded by the Social Sciences Bibliographer in consultation with Foreign Humanities Bibliographer. Languages Emphasis is on English language publications, followed by French, Italian and German. French and Italian language publications are required for the respective programmes with the French language publications funded to French. German language publications are obtained when they are of significance to the discipline and no translation is available. Translations of significant works from other languages into English are usually acquired.