How can corpora reveal language change over time?

• A. By analyzing only syntax in isolated sentences.
• B. By ignoring historical periods and focusing on the present.
• C. By tracking frequencies, senses, and collocations across periods to show patterns of shift.
• D. By cataloging only vocabulary borrowed from other languages.

Answer: (C)

Corpora reveal language change over time by tracking how often items occur, how their meanings shift, and which other words they tend to co-occur across different historical periods. Time-annotated corpora let you map frequency trajectories, showing which forms rise or fall in use. They also let you observe sense changes, where a word’s meaning expands, narrows, or shifts in new directions, revealing semantic drift. Examining collocations—the words that typically surround a term—across periods highlights changes in usage contexts and connotations, signaling how relationships between words evolve. Taken together, these dimensions create a picture of how language changes over decades or centuries, not just how it is used now.

Focusing only on syntax in isolated sentences misses broader diachronic variation and discourse-level usage. Analyzing the present ignores historical data that reveal how forms and patterns developed. Cataloging only vocabulary borrowed from other languages misses internal change in native vocabulary, including shifts in meaning and typical contexts of use, which collocation analysis can also expose.