ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the academic discipline of linguistics and a selection of its branches and schools, seeking out relationships between these and Translation Studies and work on language processing. The notion of linguistic universals is raised along with its potential connection with rationalism, which, in turn, is contrasted with empiricist approaches, which tend to provide the descriptions of language on the basis of which universals are typically identified. Subsequent to the pioneering work of Sapir and Whorf, relatively few linguists have used translational data in the development of their models, whereas Translation Studies scholars have been more open to drawing on linguistic theories to develop approaches to and theories of translation.
