Linguistics is the scientific study of human language and its three main aims are to understand what language knowledge is (competence), how it is acquired (acquisition), and how it is put to use (performance). It encompasses different branches including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Phonetics studies speech sounds, their production, transmission, and perception, while phonology deals with the sound system of a language and the rules that govern the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds. Morphology focuses on the internal organization of words and their meaningful units called morphemes. Syntax is about the formation and understanding of sentences, while semantics deals with meaning in language. Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context and how social context influences interpretation. Other branches of linguistics include psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and anthropological linguistics.