Changes

Translations

mutamento | changement linguistique | Sprachwandel

Article

By language change we indicate the diachronic change that occurs within a language. Change can be divided into two different types: language internal change (both systematic, as in the case of phonetic change by [[ | sound lawsound laws]], and unsystematic, as in the case of semantic change]]) and contact-induced change. Change should not be confused with variation, which also represents a pattern of differentiation, but is defined synchronically and not diachronically. When dealing with ancient corpus-languages, the disambiguation between language internal and contact-induced change is crucial, and depends on the successful identification of language contact in a location at a given stage.