| Historical Linguistics |
Article Index for Historical |
Website Links For Historical Linguistics |
Information AboutHistorical Linguistics |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS | |
| historical linguisticshistorical linguistics | |
| linguistics | |
| philology | |
| history | |
|
Historical linguistics (also '''diachronic linguistics''') is the study of language change. It has four main concerns:
Modern historical linguistics dates from the late 18th Century and grew out of the earlier discipline of Philology , the study of ancient texts and documents, which goes back to antiquity. At first historical linguistics was Comparative Linguistics and mainly concerned with establishing language families and the reconstruction of prehistoric languages, using the Comparative Method and Internal Reconstruction . The focus was on the well-known Indo-European Languages , many of which had long written histories. But since then, significant comparative linguistic work has been done on the Uralic Languages , Austronesian Languages and various families of Native American Languages , among many others. Comparative Linguistics is now, however, only a part of a more broadly conceived discipline of historical linguistics. For the Indo-European Languages comparative study is now a highly specialised field and most research is being carried out on the subsequent development of these languages, particularly the development of the modern standard varieties. Initially, ''all'' modern linguistics was historical in orientation - even the study of modern dialects involved looking at their origins. But . Also, the work of Sociolinguists on linguistic variation has shown synchronic states are not uniform: the speech habits of older and younger speakers differ in ways which point to language change. Synchronic variation is linguistic change in progress.. The biological Origin Of Language is in principle part of the remit of historical linguistics, but most linguistics regard it as too remote to be reliably established by the Comparative Method , given the remoteness from historical records. Mass Lexical Comparison has been proposed as an alternative which can overcome the limitations of the comparative method, though in the absence of the comparative method's rigid criteria for establishing Cognate s, many linguists regard the results of mass lexical comparison as unreliable and unfalsifiable. The findings of historical linguistics are often used as a basis for hypotheses about the groupings and movements of peoples, particularly in the prehistoric period. However, it is now recognized that relating language to Ethnic Identity is problematic, as is relating language history to Archaeological or Genetic evidence. SEE ALSO
BIBLIOGRAPHY
|
|
|