This subfield studies the vocabulary of dead languages, including the meanings of words and how they were used in context.
Historical linguistics: The study of the historical development of a language, including its structure, words and meanings.
Etymology: The study of the origins and history of words, and how they have evolved over time.
Phonetics: The study of the sounds of language, including their production and perception.
Orthography: The study of the writing system of a language, including the rules governing spelling, punctuation and capitalization.
Phonology: The study of the phonemes and phonological rules of a language.
Lexicology: The study of the vocabulary of a language, including its words and their meanings.
Morphology: The study of the structure and forms of words in a language.
Semantics: The study of meaning in language, including the relationships between words and the concepts they represent.
Syntax: The study of the grammatical structure of sentences and phrases in a language.
Corpus linguistics: The study of language as it is used in real-world contexts, including the analysis of large collections of language data.
Lexicography: The art and science of compiling dictionaries, including the selection of words, their definitions, and their presentation.
Collocation: The study of the habitual or customary combination of words, phrases, and syntactic structures.
Terminology: The study of the technical language used in specific fields of study, including the selection of terms, their definitions, and their usage.
Dictionary criticism: The evaluation of dictionaries in terms of their completeness, accuracy, clarity, and usefulness.
Corpus-based lexicography: The creation of dictionaries and other lexical resources that are based on large corpora of language data.
Electronic lexicography: The creation of dictionaries and other lexical resources that are designed for use in digital environments.
Monolingual lexicon: This type of lexicon is a dictionary that explains the meanings of words within a language. For dead languages, it provides a comprehensive understanding of the words and their meanings.
Bilingual lexicon: This type of lexicon gives information about different languages and their meaning relationships. In the case of dead languages, it helps understand the meaning of the words that belonged to a particular language and their correlation with other languages.
Historical lexicon: As the name suggests, a historical lexicon provides information about the etymology, history, and development of words within a language. It helps to understand the cultural and social context of the language when it was spoken.
Technical lexicon: Technical lexicons focus on the words that are unique to a particular field or profession. For example, in ancient Greece, a technical lexicon for botany would have helped explain the specific names of plants and their properties.
Encyclopedic lexicon: This type of lexicon is an extensive reference book on various subjects, covering different parts of the language.
Reverse lexicon: This lexicon provides meanings of words in other languages as compared to the language it is written in.
Synonym lexicon: This type of lexicon provides various words that have the same or similar meaning to the word that one searches for.
Thesaurus: A Thesaurus provides an index of various linguistic units like phrases and other synonyms. The ancient Greek language had a Thesaurus that was divided into subjects, for instance, emotions, morals, or science.
Phraseology lexicon: This type of lexicon lists common phrases, idioms, and expressions in a language.
Dialect lexicon: This lexicon provides explanations of dialectical terms, regional ways of speaking that develop due to geographical isolation or other social and cultural groups.