语言学是一门用来描述与说明人类有关语言官能的学问。在古代文明，语言学源于正确描述古典礼拜仪式的语言，比如波你尼（Pāṇini,公元前4世纪）对梵文语法的研究，又或是希腊语言在逻辑及修辞方面的发展。在约公元前4世纪开始，中国也发展了本身语法的传统；而阿拉伯和希伯来的语法则在中世纪发展出来。

现代语言学在18世纪开始发展，一直至19世纪的“文本学的黄金时代”。在20世纪上半期，语言学主要受结构主义学者的影响，其理论建基于欧洲学者弗迪南·德·索绪尔及美国学者爱德华·萨丕尔，Leonard Bloomfield等人的著作。在1960年代，语言学出现了许多新的领域，比如诺姆·乔姆斯基的生成文法，William Labov的社会语言学及现代的心理语言学。

Linguistics as a study endeavors to describe and explain the human faculty of language.

Linguistic study was originally motivated by the correct description of classical liturgical language, notably that of Sanskrit grammar, or by the development of logic and rhetoric in ancient Greece, leading to a grammatical tradition in Hellenism. Beginning around the 4th century BCE, China also developed its own grammatical traditions. Traditions of Arabic grammar and Hebrew grammar developed during the Middle Ages, also in a religious context.