"Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time."
Comparing the dead language to other languages, looking for similarities and differences.
Linguistic Typology: The study of language typology, i.e., the classification of languages into different types based on their characteristics.
Historical Linguistics: The study of how languages evolve over time, including language reconstruction and language change.
Phonetics and Phonology: The study of the sounds of language, including articulatory phonetics and audiology.
Morphology: The study of the structure of words and their parts, including inflectional and derivational morphology.
Syntax: The study of the rules that govern the structure of sentences and how they are formed.
Semantics: The study of meaning in language, including lexical semantics and compositional semantics.
Pragmatics: The study of how context influences meaning, including speech acts and implicature.
Computational Linguistics: The use of computers to analyze language, including natural language processing and machine translation.
Sociolinguistics: The study of how language varies across social groups, including dialects and language change.
Psycholinguistics: The study of how language is processed in the mind, including language acquisition and language processing disorders.
Neurolinguistics: The study of how language is processed in the brain, including the neural basis of language and language disorders.
Corpus Linguistics: The analysis of language data, including corpus design and analysis methods.
Discourse Analysis: The study of how language is used in context, including discourse structure and discourse markers.
Anthropological Linguistics: The study of the relationships between language and culture, including linguistic anthropology and ethnography of communication.
Cognitive Linguistics: The study of how language reflects thought and how we use language to express our thoughts, including cognitive semantics and conceptual metaphor.
Indo-European Comparative Linguistics: This type of comparative linguistics involves the study of the ancient Indo-European languages such as Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek, and their similarities and differences.
Semitic Comparative Linguistics: This type of linguistic comparison focuses on the study of the ancient Semitic languages, including Akkadian, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic.
East Asian Comparative Linguistics: This type of comparative linguistics is the study of the ancient languages of East Asia, including Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, and their similarities and differences.
African Linguistics: Another area of comparative linguistics for dead languages is the study of the ancient languages of Africa, such as Egyptian, Berber, and Nubian.
American Indian Linguistics: Comparative linguistics for dead languages can also involve the study of the ancient languages of the Americas, such as Navajo, Quechua, and Maya.
Dravidian Linguistics: This type of comparative linguistics focuses on the study of the ancient Dravidian languages of India and their similarities and differences.
Altaic Linguistics: Comparative linguistics can also include the study of Altaic languages such as Mongolian, Turkish, and Tungusic languages.
Austroasiatic Linguistics: Another area of comparative linguistics for dead languages is the study of the Austroasiatic languages such as Vietnamese, Khmer, and Mon-Khmer languages.
Finno-Ugric Linguistics: This type of comparative linguistics focuses on studying the ancient languages of the Finno-Ugric language family such as Finnish, Hungarian, and Estonian.
Turkic Linguistics: Comparative linguistics can also include the study of the Turkic languages like Turkish, Tatar, and Uyghur.
"The principal concerns of historical linguistics include: to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages, to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and to 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, to explore the impact of cultural and social factors on language evolution."
"To reconstruct the pre-history of languages and to determine their relatedness, grouping them into language families (comparative linguistics)."
"To develop general theories about how and why language changes."
"To explore the impact of cultural and social factors on language evolution."
"Historical linguistics is founded on the Uniformitarian Principle, which is defined by linguist Donald Ringe as: Unless we can demonstrate significant changes in the conditions of language acquisition and use between some time in the unobservable past and the present, we must assume that the same types and distributions of structures, variation, changes, etc. existed at that time in the past as in the present."
"Unless we can demonstrate significant changes in the conditions of language acquisition and use between some time in the unobservable past and the present, we must assume that the same types and distributions of structures, variation, changes, etc. existed at that time in the past as in the present."
"To describe the history of speech communities."
"To study the history of words, i.e. etymology."
"To describe and account for observed changes in particular languages."
"Reconstructing the pre-history of languages and determining their relatedness, grouping them into language families."
"Exploring the impact of cultural and social factors on language evolution."
"The scientific study of language change over time."
"Also termed diachronic linguistics."
"To develop general theories about how and why language changes."
"The study of the history of words."
"By observing and describing changes in particular languages."
"By reconstructing pre-history, studying the history of speech communities, and analyzing etymology."
"Determining the relatedness of languages and grouping them into language families."
"The Uniformitarian Principle, which assumes that the same types and distributions of structures, variation, changes, etc. existed in the past as in the present, unless demonstrated otherwise."