What is diachronic corpus linguistics?

• A. A prescriptive approach to grammar instruction.
• B. A method for annotating phonetic features in contemporary speech.
• C. The study of language change over time using large, time-stamped text corpora.
• D. A technique for predicting future language forms using folklore.

Answer: (D)

Diachronic corpus linguistics is the study of how language changes over time by analyzing large collections of texts that have dates attached. The idea is to track usage across different periods, measuring how word frequencies, meanings, spellings, and grammatical patterns shift as language evolves. By slicing corpora into time periods, researchers can spot trends, such as words gaining new senses, Moran collocations changing, or syntactic structures becoming more (or less) common. This approach relies on actual historical data rather than intuition, making it possible to observe long-term developments in real usage. It differs from methods that prescribe rules, focus only on sounds in contemporary speech, or try to predict the future from folklore, because it centers on documented changes in language over time using dated texts.