high-frequency clusters in conversation

[Pennylin]

Such chunks are frequent and a natural phenomenon in conversations.
What makes them so frequent then? Could their pragmatic functions be one reason?

 

[xujiajin]

回复: high-frequency clusters in conversation

Frequent urges to get oneself across account for the motivation for using certain structures, which eventually turn out to be shared structures by the majority of the speech community. This is the emergent view of language. Yeah, you can use pragmatic function, if you like.