language without reference to the changes that are a natural part of the development of any language. Second, linguists can take a diachronic approach (Gk. διά, ‘through’ + χρόνος, ‘time’), viewing language from a historical perspective. Included in this area is historical linguistics, the study of the origin and development of the sound patterns of language, of the forms of individual words, of the grammatical relationships between words, and of all other data related to language. A third approach
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