"Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time."
This subfield focuses on sound systems in dead languages, including how different sounds were produced and how they were perceived.
Articulatory Phonetics: This topic investigates how sounds are produced, by analyzing the physical structures of the vocal tract, such as the lips, tongue, and vocal cords.
Acoustic Phonetics: This topic studies the physical properties of speech sounds, such as their frequency, intensity, and duration.
Auditory Phonetics: This topic focuses on the perception of speech sounds by the human ear, including the discrimination of different sounds and their interpretation by the brain.
Phonology: This topic deals with the systematic organization of sounds in a language, including the patterns of sound distribution and the rules for the combination of sounds.
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA): This topic introduces the standardized system of symbols used to represent the sounds of any language.
Syllable Structure: This topic examines the structure of syllables, including the number of vowels and consonants, and the types of sound sequences that are possible.
Suprasegmentals: This topic studies the features of speech that extend beyond the individual sounds, such as intonation, stress, and rhythm.
Dialects and Accents: This topic explores the differences in pronunciation between different regional, social, and cultural groups, and investigates the factors that contribute to these variations.
Speech Disorders: This topic introduces different types of speech disorders, such as stuttering, dysarthria, and apraxia, and investigates the causes and treatments for these conditions.
Phonetics and Technology: This topic examines the application of phonetics in technology, such as speech recognition software, text-to-speech synthesizers, and forensic speech analysis software.
Articulatory Phonetics: This type of phonetics focuses on the way humans produce sounds and describes how speech sounds are made by manipulating the position of the lips, tongue, and other speech organs.
Acoustic Phonetics: Acoustic phonetics deals with the physical properties of sound waves, including their frequency, amplitude, and duration.
Auditory Phonetics: Auditory Phonetics examines how humans perceive and process speech sounds.
Experimental Phonetics: Experimental phonetics involves the use of laboratory techniques to study phonetics, including the use of audio recordings, spectrograms, and other tools.
Historical Phonetics: Historical phonetics examines changes in the sounds of languages over time and how they have evolved.
Comparative Phonetics: Comparative phonetics analyzes similarities and differences in sounds across different languages and language families.
Orthographic Phonetics: Orthographic phonetics deals with the way sounds are represented in a writing system or alphabet.
Neurolinguistic Phonetics: Neurolinguistic phonetics focuses on the brain mechanisms involved in speech production and perception.
Sociolinguistic Phonetics: Sociolinguistic phonetics examines how social and cultural factors influence speech sounds, including language variation and dialects.
Forensic Phonetics: Forensic phonetics analyses speech recordings to aid in legal investigations and can be used to identify speakers, detect voice disguises or alterations, and analyze speech pathology.
"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."