"Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time."
Explores how dialects change over time and the factors that contribute to their evolution.
Language variation: This topic covers the study of language variation, including regional, social, and historical variations, and introduces the concepts of dialect, accent, and idiolect.
Sociolinguistics: This topic investigates language variation in relation to social factors such as age, gender, class, and ethnicity, and explores how these factors influence language use and evolution.
Phonetics and phonology: This topic deals with the sounds of language, their production, and classification. It covers phonetic and phonemic transcription and the principles of sound change.
Morphology: This topic covers the study of the structure of words and how they change over time. It investigates the formation of words and the way that grammatical inflections change over time.
Syntax: This topic covers the arrangement of words and phrases in sentences and how it changes over time. It explores the evolution of grammar and the syntax of different dialects.
Lexicography: This topic covers the study of the vocabulary of a language and the way it changes over time. It explores the etymology of words and the evolution of their meanings.
Language contact: This topic covers the study of language contact, including borrowing, code-switching, and pidgins and creoles. It explores the impact of contact on language change and the evolution of dialects.
Historical linguistics: This topic investigates the evolution of languages over time, including the reconstruction of proto-languages and the principles of language change.
Toponymy: This topic investigates the study of place names and how they reflect the history of a region and its language. It explores the etymology of place names and the evolution of their pronunciation.
Writing systems: This topic covers the study of the systems used to represent language in writing, including the history of the alphabet, the development of scripts, and the impact of writing on language change.
Forensic linguistics: This topic investigates language analysis in legal cases and the use of dialect analysis in forensic linguistics.
Computational linguistics: This topic investigates how computers can be used to analyze language and conduct research in dialectology. It explores the principles and methods of natural language processing and machine learning.
Comparative Dialectology: This type of dialectology involves the comparison of different dialects in terms of their historical development, geographical distribution, and linguistic features.
Geographical Dialectology: This type of dialectology involves the analysis of dialectal variation across geographic regions, and how this variation has evolved over time.
Social Dialectology: This type of dialectology focuses on the relationship between dialectal variation and social factors such as socioeconomic status, education, and ethnicity.
Contact Dialectology: This type of dialectology examines the influence of language contact on dialectal variation, and how dialects change as they come into contact with other languages.
Diachronic Dialectology: This type of dialectology studies dialectal variation over time, tracking changes in dialects as they evolve and develop.
Synchronic Dialectology: This type of dialectology studies dialectal variation at a particular point in time, without taking into account historical changes or developments.
Quantitative Dialectology: This type of dialectology uses statistical analysis to identify and measure dialectal variation, and to study how this variation is distributed across different regions and populations.
Corpus Linguistics: This type of dialectology uses large collections of texts to study dialectal variation, and to identify changes in dialects over time.
Historical Sociolinguistics: This type of dialectology combines the study of historical linguistics with the study of social factors such as class, gender, and ethnicity, to examine how language use and dialectal variation have changed over time in different social contexts.
"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."