ABSTRACT
The structure of a language may be analyzed and described as it exists at some point in time, either in the present or the past. The approach that considers a language as though it had been sliced through time, ignoring historical antecedents, is referred to as synchronic linguistics. A language family includes all those languages that are related by virtue of having descended from a single ancestral language. The number of languages that make up a language family varies greatly. Semantic typology has been proposed; its proponents compare languages, for example, according to how much specificity relating to meaning a language requires. Languages change not only internally from within but also as a result of external influences. Not all languages adopt foreign words to the same extent. Vocabularies also adjust to new inventions or ideas and objects introduced through intercultural contact by extending the meaning of existing words to include a new referent - semantic extension.
