Historical Linguistics

Historical linguistics (also called diachronic linguistics) is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:

  • to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages
  • to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and determine their relatedness, grouping them into language families (comparative linguistics)
  • to develop general theories about how and why language changes
  • to describe the history of speech communities
  • to study the history of words, i.e. etymology.

Read more about Historical Linguistics:  History and Development, Evolution Into Other Fields, Conservative, Innovative, Archaic

Famous quotes containing the word historical:

    Yet the companions of the Muses
    will keep their collective nose in my books
    And weary with historical data, they will turn to my dance tune.
    Ezra Pound (1885–1972)