Applied linguistics, in general, has extended the science of
linguistics and related it to other disciplines such as sociology,
psychology, neurology and computation. Sociolinguistics is a
branch where linguistics and sociology meet to discuss such topics
as the effect of geographical location, social class and education
on dialects. Psycholinguistics, the study of language and
psychology, covers such areas as the effect of memory,
motivation, cognition and personality on language learning.
Neurology (i.e. the study of the brain and the nervous system) and
linguistics have produced the science of neurolinguistics which
discusses effects of brain damage on certain linguistic abilities
and deficiencies. Computational linguistics attempts to analyse
language in terms of mathematical equations and formulas with the aim of producing machine translation where the human
translator can be assisted, if not replaced, by a computer.