Linguistics and Language Evolution

Content words are words such as nouns, most verbs, adjectives, and adverbs that refer to some object, action, or characteristic.

In linguistics, grammaticalisation (also known as grammatisation, grammaticisation) is a process of language change by which words representing objects and actions (i.e., nouns and verbs) transform to become grammatical markers (affixes, prepositions, etc).

A lingua franca is a language used for communication between groups speaking different native languages, but not used within the same group. A dialect is a regional variety, accent is pronunciation, and diabolic means devilish.

Dialect is a variety of a language that is distinguished from other varieties.

Eloquence (from Latin eloquentia) is fluent, forcible, elegant or persuasive speaking. 

Synaeresis (also spelled syneresis) is a phonological process of sound change.

This is the correct answer. The world’s languages differ greatly in the complexity of their morphology.

Agreement or concord happens when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates.

Lemmatisation (or lemmatization) in linguistics, is the process of grouping together the different inflected forms of a word so they can be analysed as a single item.

In psycholinguistics, bootstrapping refers to the question of how language acquisition gets started. A child gradually acquires a great deal of interlocking knowledge about the structure and vocabulary of his or her language. It has sometimes been proposed that some specific type of linguistic knowledge can be acquired early, and that this enables the child to analyze words or sentences well enough to acquire further knowledge from them. Metaphorically, this early knowledge would serve as bootstraps by which the child pulls himself or herself up.

As a synonym, 'source' correctly represents the concept of 'derivation'. Derivation refers to the origin or source from which something is derived. If you trace the derivation of a word, you're finding its source.

Function words (or grammatical words or synsemantic words or structure-class words) are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express grammatical relationships with other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker.

Language loss occurs when a language has no more native speakers and becomes a dead language.

The word lexicon comes from Greek lexicon meaning book of words or dictionary. It is related to the Greek word lexis meaning word. Roman and Latin have different etymological origins.

In the late 18th century, the word 'quiz' originally referred to an odd or eccentric person or a practical joke/trick. The modern meaning of a 'test of knowledge' did not emerge until the mid-19th century.