How do you call the study of how language/words changed over

>>2001232

Philology and Historical linguistics are the study of language change and the history of languages. The latter is more old fashioned and closely related to literary criticism. Involves the very close reading of few ancient texts; like one guy who study the changes of a few words found in Anglo-Saxon texts. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were philologists. Historical linguistics is a more modern and (hopefully) more scientific approach the the linguistic past that evolved out of philology.

>>2001232
Etymology?

>>2001371
OP here: I meant the exact branch of linguistics. There are so many of them that it would be hard to look for the info myself, and I need it fast.

So, anyone knows the name of the exact branch of linguistics that deals with language changing words and their meanings over time?

>>2001461

Okay, I think etymology is what fits what you are looking for.

>>2001461
>>2001544
yeah, it's etymology. it's only barely part of linguistics though.

>>2001818
>yeah, it's etymology. it's only barely part of linguistics though.
wut

>>2001991
>yeah, it's etymology
the word OP is looking for is etymology.

>it's only barely part of linguistics
OP asked for "the exact branch of linguistics" that studied the histories of words in a language. that's etymology, but it's not really a branch of linguistics, it's more a by-product of historical linguistics.

>>2002069
>it's not really a branch of linguistics, it's more a by-product of historical linguistics
Not to get hung up on fiddly semantic bullshit, but how do you figure this? Etymology is arguably the most important branch of historical linguistics -- the field couldn't exist without it!

>>2002103
>the field couldn't exist without it!
I don't think that's correct. Etymology is about how individual words change over time. Historical linguistics isn't about how individual words change, it's about how languages change. The words of a language are totally arbitrary and are thus peripheral to historical linguistics. Historical linguistics is concerned with features of languages more significant than what their words happen to mean.

>>2002575
Without etymology the comparative method would be impossible, which means it'd be vastly harder to assign languages to families, and also that any kind of reconstruction would be impossible, which limits you to studying languages with ample textual sources; there goes half of the field right there. Studying semantic drift wouldn't be possible without a way to document the evolution of individual words. Neither would studying sound change. You have a hunch that Proto-Indo-European /d/ tends to give way to /t/ in Germanic languages? No you don't, because you haven't reconstructed a single PIE word! Morphology, orthography, you'd be crippled if you tried to study either of those without being able to trace the development of individual words over time.

Trying to study historical linguistics without etymology would be like trying to build a house without bricks, because individual bricks are insignificant.

>>2004467
This might be a troll, but if you're really interested in historical linguistics then you should start reading the historical linguistics journals and see just how much of what you wrote is true.

>>2004467
>"The primary goal of historical linguistics is not etymologies, but accurate etymology is an important product of historical linguistic work."
Campbell, L. (2013). Historical linguistics. Edinburgh University Press.
You can find a pdf of this short textbook with a google search if you want to learn more.