•  19
    Verse form
    Human Nature 8 (2): 171-203. 1997.
    This paper presents a pilot study in the "epidemiological" program for cultural research put forward by Dan Sperber. Theory is offered to argue that verse form is so disabling that its worldwide distribution must be explained by functions other than the broad communicative, or ideological, power traditionally attributed to it. The theoretical case is confirmed by numerical data showing that in matched texts of English prose and verse the latter contain words of a lower mean length (measured in s…Read more