 Hi, this unit deals with the development of meaning over time. It discusses the central principles of the development of meaning in the broader context of language change and presents current views on how and why words can change their meaning and on how and why new words appear in and disappear from a language. In the virtual session we will start with etymology, the study of the origins and histories of individual words and we'll then first look at semantic change and we'll then continue with lexical change before we finally discuss the factors and principles that lead to these developments. As usual, the question sheet provides you with numerous hyperlinks and video links for help. The mastery worksheet is a dynamic multiple-choice task which should be easy to pass after going through the virtual session and the practical contains data, data from many languages to illustrate the principles of historical semantics. I'm sure you will enjoy this unit.