DIACHRONIC AND SYNCHRONIC

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DIACHRONIC AND SYNCHRONIC. Contrasting terms in LINGUISTICS, which make a distinction between the study of the history of language (diachronic linguistics) and the study of a state of language at any given time (synchronic linguistics). Language study in the 19c was largely diachronic, but in the 20c emphasis has been on synchronic analysis. The terms were first employed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who used the analogy of a tree-trunk to describe them: a vertical cut was diachronic, a horizontal cut synchronic.