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This perspective explores how languages adapt and change over time in response to cultural, societal, and environmental factors. Language evolution within the framework of historical linguistics is akin to Lamarckism in the sense that linguistic traits acquired during an individual's lifetime can potentially influence subsequent generations of ...
Over enough time, changes in a language can accumulate to such an extent that it is no longer recognizable as the same language. For instance, modern English is the result of centuries of language change applying to Old English, even though modern English is extremely divergent from Old English in grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. The two ...
The 2012–13 autumn/winter season would fail to produce a daily maximum temperature below freezing 32 °F (0 °C) until January 1, 2013, the first such time that has happened in Chicago weather records. The entire calendar year of 2012 did not record a temperature lower than 5 °F (−15 °C).
The distribution of languages has changed substantially over time. Major regional languages like Elamite, Sogdian, Koine Greek, or Nahuatl in ancient, post-classical and early modern times have been overtaken by others due to changing balance of power, conflict and migration. The relative status of languages has also changed, as with the ...
Metonymy: Change based on nearness in space or time, e.g., jaw "cheek" → "mandible". Synecdoche: Change based on whole-part relation. The convention of using capital cities to represent countries or their governments is an example of this. Hyperbole: Change from weaker to stronger meaning, e.g., kill "torment" → "slaughter"
Cyclic drift is the mechanism of long-term evolution that changes the functional characteristics of a language over time, such as the reversible drifts from SOV word order to SVO and from synthetic inflection to analytic observable as typological parameters in the syntax of language families and of areal groupings of languages open to investigation over long periods of time.
In urban settings, language change occurs due to the combination of three factors: the diversity of languages spoken, the high population density, and the need for communication. Urban vernaculars, urban contact varieties, and multiethnolects emerge in many cities around the world as a result of language change in urban settings.
a division within the examination of linguistic geography separating the studies of change over time and space; [13] Many studies in what is now called contact linguistics have researched the effect of language contact, [14] as the languages or dialects (varieties) of peoples have interacted. [7]