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Anthropological linguistics is the study of the relations between language and culture context in any particular place.  and the relations between human biology, cognition and language. This strongly overlaps the field of linguistic anthropology, which is the branch of anthropology that studies humans through the languages that they use.

Overview[edit | edit source]

Anthropological linguistics looks at the context of languages changing over time. The change occurring throughout the structure and patterning of sounds and words. Anthropological linguistics looks at the influence and power held within the various languages around the world.

Influences of Anthropological Linguistics

Anthropological linguistics has had a major impact in the studies of such areas as visual perception (especially colour) and bioregional democracy, both of which are concerned with distinctions that are made in languages about perceptions of the surroundings.

Conventional linguistic anthropology also has implications for sociology and self-organization of peoples. Study of the Penan people, for instance, reveals that their language employs six different and distinct words whose best English translation is "we".^{[citation needed]} Anthropological linguistics studies these distinctions, and relates them to types of societies and to actual bodily adaptation to the senses, much as it studies distinctions made in languages regarding the colours of the rainbow: seeing the tendency to increase the diversity of terms, as evidence that there are distinctions that bodies in this environment must make, leading to situated knowledge and perhaps a situated ethics, whose final evidence is the differentiated set of terms used to denote "we".

Structures in Anthropological linguistics:

Phonology

 A common variation of linguistics that focuses on the sounds within speech of any given language. Phonology puts a large focus on the systematic structure of the sounds being observed.

• Vocal Tract:
  • Consisting of the passageways between the lips and larynx. The vocal tract is important in providing the opportunity for speech. 
    • [1]

• Segments:
  • The separation of sound waves that we can breakdown, to create sounds or words
    • [2]

• Level of Representation:
  • Provides for the ability to separate the similar segments.

•   Phonological Rules:
  • The rules that go along with understanding segments at different levels.

Morphology

Morphology in linguistics commonly looks at the structure of words within a language to develop a better understanding for the word form being used. Morphology looks broadly at the connection of word forms within a specific language in relation to the culture or environment it is rooted within.

• Lexical morphemes
  • Words or sounds that hold their own meaning.

• Grammatical morphemes:
  • Used in relation to lexical morphemes

• Free morphemes:
  • A morpheme that can become a word of its own.
• Bound morphemes:
  • A morpheme unable to stand alone.
• Inflection:
  • A suffix that is unable to change the base of the word.
• Derivational:
  • A changing suffix.

Language change

• Language Universals:
  • Similarities shared by all languages.