Question

Five sentences have been removed from the text below. Read and choose which sentences (A - H) best complete

each gap Use the underline segments to help you. There are three sentences you will not need to use. Resistance to changes in grammar is fultile, say researchers.
Comparisons have long been drawn between biological evolution and changes in language, with experts noting that preferences such as a desire for emphasis can act as a type of "natural selection" , affecting which worlds or forms of grammar are passed an between generations.1. The authors of the study say that the work adds to our understanding of how language changes over centuries. "Whether it is by random chance or selection, one of the things that is true about English - and indeed other languages - is that the language changes, "said Joshua Plotkin, co-author of the research from the University of Pennsylvania.
Writing in the journal Nature, Plotkin and colleagues discribe how they tracked different types of grammatical changes across the ages.2. They focused on the use of "ed" in the past tense of verbs compared with irregular forms - for example, "spilled" versus "spilt".
The team tracked the use of 36 verbs that had at least two different forms of past tense, such as quit/quitted, spilt/spilled and leaped/ leapt. 3. That could mean the rise or fall of a past form was probably down to chance over which word individuals heard and copied. For just six of the 36 verbs, the rise of one form over another was clearly not only down to chance, but was largely a result of active preference. But there was a puzzle. "The prevailing view is that if language is changing it should in general change towards the regular form, because the regular form is easier to remember", said Plotkin. However, four of the six verbs show a rise in the irregular form of the past tense.
4. For example, the increasing popularity of "dove" rather than "dived" in American English coincides with the development of cars, and hence the rise of sound-alike " dived" and past tense "drove" in discribing jorneys. The team added that they suspect similar effects might be at work in a number of verbs that currently look like they might be changing by chance alone.
Dr. Christine Cuskley, from the Center for Language Evolution at the University of Edinburgh, agreed that similarities to commonly used irregular verbs could affect which form of past tense is on the rise. 5. What's more, Cuskley added, it is not clear if the conclusions from the latest research could be applied to other languages. "English is weird", she said.

Options
A. For most of these, there are no clear criteria for the selection of the past form that eventually became a dominant variety.
B. Specifically, "woke" is increasingly preferred over "waked" and "lit" more popular than "lighted".
C. But a new study shows that another evolutionary mechanism might play a key role: random chance.
D. New evidence reinforces that assessment by demonstrating that the evolution of languages is highly motivated by the use of language in the media.
E. However, she said that it was likely that there were other pressures affecting which form of a past tense is favored.
F. The team looked at changes in American English across more than one hundred thousand texts from 1810 onwards.
G. In every case, it was clear that the changes had been made because of popular preference.
H. That, the team note, might at least in part be down to whether the word sounds similar to other commonly used words of the age.

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