Historical linguistics, also known as diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of how languages change over time. It seeks to understand the nature...

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning)...

Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic...

descriptive and not just historical purposes arose in the 20th century.: 334  By analogy with its use in historical linguistics, the asterisk was variously...

borrowed. Campbell, Lyle. Historical Linguistics (4 ed.). MIT Press. Hock, Hans Heinrich. Principles of Historical Linguistics (2 ed.). Mouton de Gruyter...

is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics analogous to a family tree, or to phylogenetic trees of taxa used...

In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or...

radically different from the original usage. In diachronic (or historical) linguistics, semantic change is a change in one of the meanings of a word....

In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for 'layer') or strate is a historical layer of language that influences or is influenced by another language through...

In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed...