Interrelationship between the branches of linguistics?

Answer 1

Phonetics -- the study of unanalyzed speech sound. For example, you look at the sound waves to try to do voice recognition.

Phonology -- the study of analyzed speech sounds. For example, what are the vowels and consonants? Which vowels do all languages have? What sequences of sounds can begin a word in Russian?

Morphology -- the study of prefixes, suffixes and roots. For example, what order can you put prefixes in? (You can say un-under-standable, but not under-un-standable).

Syntax -- the study of word order and relationships between words. For example, why can you say:
He loaded boxes on the cart. > He loaded the cart with boxes.
But not:
He ate lunch on the pier. > ???He ate the pier with lunch.

Syntacticians also study what pronouns refer to:
He praised himself.
He asked Mary to praise herself.
????He asked Mary to praise himself. (Himself can't refer to 'he'.)

Semantics -- the study of meaning. What is a synonym or antonym? What is denotation vs. connotation.

There are also fields which study the boundaries between these basic fields, such as morphosyntax, phonosemantics, morphosemantics, etc.

Answer 2

The branches of linguistics are interconnected and often overlap. For example, phonetics studies the physical sounds of speech, which is crucial for phonology that examines how sounds function in a particular language. Syntax analyzes the structure of sentences, which is fundamental for semantics to study meaning. Pragmatics, on the other hand, looks at how language is used in social contexts, influencing sociolinguistics that focuses on the relationship between language and society.