Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It involves an analysis of language form, language meaning, function, usage, and language in context. The earliest known writings on linguistics date back to the 4th century BCE. Indian grammarian Pāṇini is often credited with being the father of linguistics.
Linguists traditionally analyze human languages by observing an interplay between sound and meaning. They describe languages using concepts such as phonemes (the smallest units of sound that have a distinct meaning in a particular language), morphemes (the smallest units of meaning), syntax (the rules governing how words are combined to form phrases and sentences), semantics (the study of word meanings) and pragmatics (the study about how context contributes to meaning).