Most human languages are transmitted by sounds and one of the most obvious differences between languages is that they sound di

semantics, which attempts to establish, given a sentence, what conditions have to hold in 
the real world for the sentence to be true. 
Conclusion 
This chapter can only give a brief outline of what is involved in the description of 
languages and each area we have discussed has a wealth of literature and a depth of detail 
which we are unable to address here. However, this brief description should be sufficient 
to introduce applied linguists to the broad themes and general concepts with which 
linguists work in developing descriptive accounts of languages.
While language description may not be a core concern for applied linguists, a coherent 
understanding of the structural features of language is important for applied linguistics 
research and practice. At all levels of their work, applied linguists must come to grips 
with language as a system and as such linguistics and language description is basic to 
applied linguistics work, even if it is not central to the questions which applied linguists 
pose themselves. We do not claim that linguistic theory is or should be the driving 
influence in applied linguistics. Rather, we are claiming that a certain level of familiarity 
with the principles of linguistics provides a framework within which the work of applied 
linguistics can be carried out in an informed and principled way. The role of linguistics 
is, therefore, to inform applied linguistics not to determine applied linguistics (cf Davies, 
1999; Widdowson, 2000).
The relationship between language description and applied linguistics is not, however, 
unidirectional. The insights which applied linguistics gains from confronting real world 

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language-related problems has great potential to inform the development of linguistic 
theory and refine our understanding of what needs to be included in language 
descriptions.