1. A computer implemented natural language processing method, comprising: receiving a text; identifying a set of linguistic characteristics contained in the text, wherein linguistic characteristics include grammatical, syntactic, and idiomatic features of the text; determining a plurality of time periods in which the text was potentially written based on the set of linguistic characteristics; retrieving a set of reference documents for each time period in the plurality of time periods in response to the determining the plurality of time periods in which the text was potentially written; producing a set of proximity scores for the text by performing a set of proximity checks using the set of linguistic characteristics, the set of reference documents for each time period, and the text, wherein the proximity checks analyze a usage frequency of the set of linguistic characteristics and a temporal closeness of the plurality of time periods in the set of linguistic characteristics between the text and the set of reference documents for each time period are to one another; ranking the plurality of time periods based on the set of proximity scores; and returning a set of one or more ranked time periods of the plurality of time periods.