Language change is variation over time in a language's phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features.
Read more about Language Change: Causes of Language Change, Types of Language Change, Sociolinguistics and Language Change, Quantifying Language Change, Language Shift and Social Status
Famous quotes containing the words language and/or change:
“The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We are such docile creatures, normally, that it takes a virus to jolt us out of life’s routine. A couple of days in a fever bed are, in a sense, health-giving; the change in body temperature, the change in pulse rate, and the change of scene have a restorative effect on the system equal to the hell they raise.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)