Historical linguistics

Historical linguistics, also called diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: 1. * to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages 2. * to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and to determine their relatedness, grouping them into language families (comparative linguistics) 3. * to develop general theories about how and why language changes 4. * to describe the history of speech communities 5. * to study the history of words, i.e. etymology

Historical linguistics

Historical linguistics, also called diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: 1. * to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages 2. * to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and to determine their relatedness, grouping them into language families (comparative linguistics) 3. * to develop general theories about how and why language changes 4. * to describe the history of speech communities 5. * to study the history of words, i.e. etymology