Organisation of the Program Degrees and Diplomas Offered Courses Offered Additional Information Scope of the Program Linguistics studies the nature of human language. It provides a general theory that can be drawn on by other disciplines.
Many philosophical problems require an understanding of the nature of linguistic distinctions.
In cognitive sciences the nature of linguistic competence is central to the question of how the mind works. The study of linguistic universals can suggest hypotheses concerning our pattern of thought, with psychological and eventually neurophysiological implications. Major topics in computer sciences cannot be addressed without an understanding of how human language works. Anthropologists and sociologists are concerned, among other things, with variations in language use in different social contexts, and with the evolution of language. The study of a foreign language and effective language teaching demand a sound general linguistic background, in terms of which the structural features of a given language can properly be understood and related to properties of other languages.