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April McMahon, Understanding Language Change (Cambridge University Press, 1994) ISBN 0-521-44665-1; James Milroy, Linguistic Variation and Change (Blackwell, 1992) ISBN 0-631-14367-X; A. C. Partridge, Tudor to Augustan English: a Study in Syntax and Style, from Caxton to Johnson, in series, The Language Library, London: A. Deutsch, 1969; 242 p ...
Semantic change (also semantic shift, semantic progression, semantic development, or semantic drift) is a form of language change regarding the evolution of word usage—usually to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from the original usage.
After a word enters a language, its meaning can change through a shift in the valence of its connotations. As an example, when "villain" entered English it meant 'peasant' or 'farmhand', but acquired the connotation 'low-born' or 'scoundrel', and today only the negative use survives. Thus 'villain' has undergone pejoration.
For example, a word can have several word senses. [3] Polysemy is distinct from monosemy, where a word has a single meaning. [3] Polysemy is distinct from homonymy—or homophony—which is an accidental similarity between two or more words (such as bear the animal, and the verb bear); whereas homonymy is a mere linguistic coincidence, polysemy ...
Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness.. Genetic relatedness implies a common origin or proto-language and comparative linguistics aims to construct language families, to reconstruct proto-languages and specify the changes that have resulted in the documented languages.
Etymological theory recognizes that words originate through a limited number of basic mechanisms, the most important of which are language change, borrowing (i.e., the adoption of loanwords from other languages); word formation such as derivation and compounding; and onomatopoeia and sound symbolism (i.e., the creation of imitative words such ...
This is a list of languages by total number of speakers. It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect . For example, Chinese and Arabic are sometimes considered single languages, but each includes several mutually unintelligible varieties , and so they are sometimes considered language families instead.
Some sociolinguists study language on a national level among large populations to find out how language is used as a social institution. [8] William Labov, a Harvard and Columbia University graduate, is often regarded as the founders of variationist sociolinguistics which focuses on the quantitative analysis of variation and change within ...