Linguistics is now a highly technical subject; it embraces, both descriptively and historically, such major divisions as phonetics, grammar, and semantics, dealing in detail with these various aspects of language. For a full account of the theory and methods of linguistic science, see the article linguistics.
Historical attitudes toward language.
As is evident from above, human life in its present form would be impossible and inconceivable without the use of language. People have long recognized the force and significance of language. Naming "applying a word to pick out and refer to a fellow human being, an animal, an object, or a class of such beings or objects "is only one part of the use of language, but it is an essential and prominent part. In many cultures men have seen in the ability to name an ability to control or to possess; this explains the reluctance, in several primitive and other communities, with which names are revealed to strangers and the taboo restrictions found in several parts of the world on using the names of persons recently dead. Lest it be thought that attitudes like this have died out in modern civilized communities, it is instructive to consider the widespread and perhaps universal taboos on naming directly things considered obscene, blasphemous, or very fearful. Indeed, use of euphemistic substitutes for words referring to death and to certain diseases actually seems to be increasing in some civilized areas.
Not surprisingly, therefore, several independent traditions ascribe a divine or at least a supernatural origin to language or to the language of a particular community. The biblical account, representing ancient Jewish beliefs, of Adam's naming the creatures of the Earth under God's guidance is well known:.
So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name (Gen.