[3] This perspective implies that the aspiring language professional, e.g. a student, must first learn the theory i.e. properties of the linguistic system, or what Ferdinand de Saussure called internal linguistics.
However, because college and university linguistics is largely distributed with the institutes and departments of a relatively small number of national languages, some larger universities also offer courses and research programmes in 'general linguistics' which may cover exotic and minority languages, cross-linguistic studies and various other topics outside the scope of the main philological departments.
This traditionally means phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics.
Pragmatics and discourse can also be included; delimitation varies between institutions.
It incorporates various models within generative grammar, which seeks to explain language structure through formal rules and transformations.