Contents › Section 3: Semantics and pragmatics › answer 20 of 24
Slip of the meaning of expressions
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Words (and grammatical structures) change their meaning radically over time in all languages. Or at least, that is the assumption in comparative and historical linguistics and every bit of evidence we have about languages seems to point in that direction.
It is possible to imagine a completely isolated community where the environment would be constant and the change would be minimal but such communities are hard to come by. Even relatively isolated communities like Martha's Vineyard showed linguistic change.
Some change happens in all languages all of the time. But how much change and how it varies depending on external contexts is unknown.
© Dominik Lukeš. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Originally published on Linguistics Stack Exchange, attributed there to Dominik Lukes (profile).