Phonetics is the study of the sounds of language and their physical properties. Phonology is concerned with the analysis and description of the meaningful sounds uttered in the production of human language, and how those sounds function in different languages. It is phonological analysis such as this that allows the foreign language teacher to pinpoint and correct students' pronunciation difficulties in the foreign language classroom. Morphology is the study of the structure of words. Morphologists study minimal meaning units, or morphemes, and investigate the possible combinations of these units in a language to form words.
Syntax is the study of the structure of sentences.
Syntacticians describe how words combine into phrases and clauses and how these combine to form sentences. Syntacticians describe the rules for converting the first sentence into the second. Semantics is the study of meaning in language. The goal of semantic study is to explain how sequences of language are matched with their proper meanings and placed in certain environments by speakers of the language. Sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the study of language as a social and cultural phenomenon.