The study of grammar led to fields like psycholinguistics , which explores the representation and function of language in the mind ; neurolinguistics , which studies language processing in the brain ; and language acquisition , which investigates how children and adults acquire a particular language .
Linguistics in its broader context includes evolutionary linguistics , which considers the origins of language ; historical linguistics , which explores language change ; sociolinguistics , which looks at the relation between linguistic variation and social structures ; psycholinguistics , which explores the representation and function of language in the mind ; neurolinguistics , which looks at language processing in the brain ; language acquisition , how children or adults acquire language ; and discourse analysis , which involves the structure of texts and conversations .