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.Although linguistics is the scientific study of language, a number of other intellectual disciplines are relevant to language and influence its study.Semiotics, for example, is the general study of signs and symbols both within language and without. Literary theorists study the use of language inliterature. Linguistics additionally draws on work from such diverse fields as psychology, speech-language pathology, informatics, computer science,philosophy, biology, human anatomy, neuroscience, sociology, anthropology, and acoustics.Terminology for the disciplineBefore the 20th century, the term "philology", first attested in 1716,[5] was commonly used to refer to the science of language, which was then predominantly historical in focus.[6] SinceFerdinand de Saussure's insistence on the importance of synchronic analysis, however, this focus has shifted[7] and the term "philology" is now generally used for the "study of a language's grammar, history and literary tradition", especially in the United States,[8] where it was never as popular as it was elsewhere (in the sense of the "science of language").[5]Although the term "linguist" in the sense of "a student of language" dates from 1641,[9] the term "linguistics" is first attested in 1847.[9] It is now the usual academic term in English for the scientific study of language.The term linguist, used for one who studies language, applies within the field to someone who either studies linguistics or uses linguistic methodologies to study groups of languages or particular languages. Outside the field, this term is commonly used to refer to people who speak many languages fluently.Fundamental concerns and divisionsLinguistics concerns itself with describing and explaining the nature of human language. Fundamental questions include what is universal to language, how language can vary, and how human beings come to know languages. Linguistic fields can then be broadly divided into those that distinguish themselves by a focus on linguistic structure and grammar, and those that distinguish themselves by the nonlinguistic factors they consider.Fundamental questionsAll humans achieve competence in whatever language is used around them when growing up, with apparently little need for explicit conscious instruction (setting aside extremely pathological cases). Linguists assume that the ability to acquire and use language is an innate, biologically based potential of modern human beings, similar to the ability to walk, because nonhumans do not acquire human language in this way (although many nonhuman animals can learn to respond to language, or can even be trained to use it to a degree).[11]There is no consensus, however, as to the extent of humans' innate potential for language, or the degree to which such innate abilities are specific to language. Some theorists claim that there is a very large set of highly abstract and specific binary settings coded into the human brain; the combinations of these settings would give rise to every language on the planet. Other linguists claim that the ability to learn language is a product of general human cognition.