CORPUS-BASED ANALYSIS OF SYNTACTIC CHANGES IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS AND EMPIRICAL FINDINGS

This article examines the application of corpus linguistic methodologies to the investigation of syntactic change in the English language from a diachronic perspective. Drawing on evidence from major historical corpora including the Helsinki Corpus, the Penn Parsed Corpora of Historical English, the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), and the Corpus of Late Modern English Texts (CLMETEV), this study presents a comprehensive overview of how computerized text collections have revolutionized our understanding of English syntactic evolution. The analysis focuses on three primary domains: the transition from synthetic to analytic structure, the grammaticalization of auxiliaries and periphrastic constructions, and the fixation of word order patterns. The article demonstrates that corpus-based approaches enable both quantitative tracking of frequency changes and qualitative analysis of syntactic environments, thereby providing empirical validation for theoretical claims about language change. Particular attention is devoted to methodological innovations including part-of-speech tagging, syntactic parsing, and multi-dimensional analysis, illustrating how these tools facilitate the investigation of complex syntactic phenomena across historical periods. The findings confirm that corpus linguistics has become an indispensable framework for historical syntax research, offering unprecedented access to systematic patterns of change that remain invisible to traditional philological approaches.