1.2.1 Diachronic versus synchronic view

• Diachrony
  Diachronic linguistics views the historical development of a language. Thus, on the diachronic axis we can go back and forth in time, watching the language with all its features change.
• Synchrony
  Synchronic linguistics views a particular state of a language at some given point in time. This could mean Modern English of the present day, or the systematic analysis of the system of Shakespeare's English. However, no comparisons are made to other states of language or other times.
  Modern linguistics, following Ferdinand de Saussure, is primarily interested in the synchronic point of view. Saussure postulated the priority of synchrony: no knowledge of the historical development of a language is necessary to examine its present system. He arrived at this radical viewpoint due to his conviction that linguistic research must concentrate on the structure of language. Later, the whole paradigm was hence called structuralism.