The study of meaning in language is known as semantics.

Language

D（）is one of the design features of human language which refers to the phenomenon that language consists of two levels: a lower level of meaningless individual sounds and a higher level of meaningful units.

Linguistics

The discipline that studies the rules governing the formation of words into permissible sentences in languages is called s（）

Chomsky defines “competence” as the ideal user’s k（）of the rules of his language.

Phonetics

Modern linguistics is mostly prescriptive, but sometimes descriptive.

In the study of linguistics, hypotheses formed should be based on language facts and checked against the observed facts.

Linguistics is generally defined as the s（）study of language.