"It is the scientific study of the origin and evolution of a word's semantic meaning across time, including its constituent morphemes and phonemes."
Studying the origin and history of the words and their meanings in the dead language.
Definition of Etymology: Etymology is the study of the origins of words and how their meanings have evolved over time.
Linguistic Evolution: The gradual changes of language over time, including the development of new words, the shifting of meanings, and the death of words.
History of Language: The history of language including the development of writing systems, the spread of language throughout the world, and the influence of trade and travel on language.
Word Origins: The study of the origins of individual words, including their root forms, borrowing from other languages, and changes in spelling and pronunciation over time.
Gender-Based Language: How gender affects language usage, and how language can reinforce or challenge gender roles.
Slang and Colloquialisms: The study of informal language, including slang and colloquialisms, and how they reflect cultural attitudes and trends.
Regional Dialects: The study of dialects and accents, including their development, differences between regions, and social implications.
Language Families: The study of the different language families, including the Indo-European, Afroasiatic, and Sino-Tibetan families.
Pidgin and Creole Languages: The study of languages that arise from the mixing of languages, including pidgin and creole languages.
Language Contact and Borrowing: The study of how languages influence each other, including borrowing of words and phrases, and cultural exchange.
Onomatopoeia: The theory of sound symbolism, or the idea that certain sounds are inherently associated with certain meanings or concepts.
Language Change: The study of what causes language change, and the different types of linguistic change that occur, such as grammaticalization, analogy or borrowing.
Language and Identity: The study of how language shapes identity and how identity shapes language usage.
Lexical Semantics: The study of how words relate to each other in meaning, sometimes referred to as semantics.
Comparative Philology: The study of the relationship between languages, their similarities, and differences which helps establish language families.
Diachronic Linguistics: The study of language changes that occur over an extended span of time.
Historical Linguistics: The study of the history, origin, and evolution of languages that are no longer spoken.
Morphology: The study of words and patterns of words to understand how they form meaning.
Phonetic/Phonology: The study of sounds in a particular language and how they are produced, respectively.
Syntax: The study of how words combine to form phrases and sentences in a particular language.
Latin: The classical language of ancient Rome and widely used in the Middle Ages until the Renaissance. Many modern European languages have roots in Latin, and it is still used in legal, scientific, and medical language.
Ancient Greek: The language of the ancient Greeks, used in literature, philosophy, and science. It is still used in the Eastern Orthodox Church and has influenced much of modern English vocabulary.
Sanskrit: The sacred language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. It has a rich literary tradition and is still used in religious rituals and ceremonies.
Old Norse: The language of the Vikings and used in the Scandinavian countries. It has influenced modern English words such as "berserk" and "skirt".
Old English (Anglo-Saxon): The language of the Anglo-Saxons and used in England from the 5th century until the Norman Conquest. It has heavily influenced modern English vocabulary.
Middle English: The language spoken in England from the 11th century until the end of the 15th century. It includes works such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and was heavily influenced by French.
Old High German: The language of the Germanic tribes of the Holy Roman Empire and used from the 6th century until the end of the 11th century.
Coptic: The language of the ancient Egyptians, written in the Coptic alphabet, which is derived from the Greek alphabet.
Akkadian: The language of ancient Mesopotamia and one of the earliest known languages with a detailed writing system.
Sumerian: The language of the Sumerian people of ancient Mesopotamia, and one of the earliest known written languages.
"It is a subfield of historical linguistics, philology and semiotics."
"It draws upon comparative semantics, morphology, pragmatics, and phonetics."
"To construct a comprehensive and chronological catalogue of all meanings that a morpheme, phoneme, word, or sign has carried across time."
"For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts, and texts about the language, to gather knowledge about how words were used during earlier periods."
"How they developed in meaning and form, or when and how they entered the language."
"Etymologists apply the methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct information about forms that are too old for any direct information to be available."
"By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the comparative method, linguists can make inferences about their shared parent language and its vocabulary."
"Word roots in many European languages, for example, can be traced all the way back to the origin of the Indo-European language family."
"Current etymological research is done on language families where little or no early documentation is available, such as Uralic and Austronesian." Note: Since the provided paragraph does not contain twenty distinct questions, I have provided answers to all possible topics covered in the paragraph.