What does a collocation indicate about language change?

• A. It indicates evolving usage and meaning through changes in habitual word pairings.
• B. It indicates fixed phonemes in a language.
• C. It indicates syntactic errors in historical texts.
• D. It indicates frequency of letter usage.

Answer: (A)

Collocation is about the habitual word pairings that speakers use regularly. When language changes, the words people pair together shift, so the same idea can be expressed with different collocations or with new partners for certain words. So a collocation indicates evolving usage and meaning through changes in habitual word pairings, showing how lexical choices migrate as the language evolves. For example, shifts in which verbs commonly accompany certain nouns, or which adjectives are used with particular nouns, reveal how meaning and emphasis have shifted over time. The other ideas don’t fit because they focus on sounds (phonemes), or on errors in historical texts, or on how often letters appear, none of which address how the habitual word pairings that carry meaning change.