Next in his book, Mencken devotes a chapter to additional syntactical peculiarities. He opens by quoting Sayce, who avers that language begins not with single words but with whole sentences. He then exclaims that when a language is new, quickly developing, and "unrestrained by critical analysis," there is a marked tendency to sacrifice the integrity of individual words for the well being of the complete sentence. Reclaiming past examples, the author adds such phenomena as would've, could've, sort'a, and kind'a...as well as off'a or off'n, as in "I bought.....
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