Syntactic persistence is the tendency for speakers to produce sentences using similar grammatical patterns and rules of language as those they have used before. Although the way this occurs is not well understood, previous research has indicated that this effect may involve a specific aspect of memory function.
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Are you a fool for mnemonics? If so, you’ll fall head over nubucks for Mignon Fogarty–a.k.a. the Grammar Girl–and her handy new audio guide to writing and speaking well.
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Verbs evolve and homogenize at a rate inversely proportional to their prevalence in the English language, according to a formula developed by Harvard University mathematicians who've invoked evolutionary principles to study our language over the past 1,200 years, from "Beowulf" to "Canterbury Tales" to "Harry Potter."
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The verb forms the heart of a sentence. Although a lot of research has been done into the role that verbs play during the transfer of information, less is known about exactly how and when the listener or reader uses this information. Dutch researcher Dieuwke de Goede delved into this subject and investigated how the functioning of the verb is expressed when sentences are listened to.
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