Languages and cultures self-repair the way ecosystems do, by selective replication of novel components that manage to find a job.
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Once you can't say "I [chopped-completely] wood," you have to say "I chopped the wood." Quantifiers like "all" also increase.
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You can see intelligent echoes of this in modern stigmatized vernacular forms: "I done chopped the wood" is more precise than the standard.
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@sarahdoingthing I thought it was the decline of case-markings, parallel to Latin.Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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