Publications

Publication details [#7468]

Pawley, Andrew and Frances Hodgetts Syder. 1983. Natural selection in syntax: Notes on adaptive variation and change in vernacular and literary grammar. Journal of Pragmatics 7 : 551–579.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Language as a subject
Person as a subject

Annotation

It is argued that some of the variations occuring in syntactic morphological usages in conversational and formal written English, can be explained in terms of the Darwinian concept of natural selection. Moreover, it is argued that English conversational grammar represents an older and more natural tradition than the literacy-based form of English.