"Would you just die already? Priming and Obsolescence in Grammar”

Why won’t some grammatical elements in a language just die out? In this talk, I provide evidence to show that persistence in discourse, the priming of a grammatical item G by some prior mention of G or one of its variants in discourse, plays a crucial role in keeping obsolescing grammatical items from dying out completely. Examples will be drawn from Spanish, Portuguese, and English. 
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