Historical Linguistics

From iCulturalDiplomacy
Jump to: navigation, search
Historical Linguistics

The study of how language has changed throughout history. Historical linguists attempt to discover and describe changes in language, highlight similarities and relations in languages so as to be able to group them into language families, and understand how and why language changes. Through the analysis of word patterns and relationships, historical linguists can determine the roots of languages. Historical linguistics also comprises etymology, the study of the history of words, and dialectology, the study of differences in regional dialects, which varies greatly from culture to culture.


External links and references