[…] in syntax, natural processes involve constraints on expressibility. Innate cognitive structures must be organized in an ordered, time-limited sequence at the level of expression. The sequence is limited not only by the constraints of utterance production, but also by a principle of accessibility, which requires that material be laid out in ways readably decidable by the listener. One expects fundamental semantic-syntactic (‘semantactic’) constructs, without which language cannot be language, such as negativity, counterfactuality, relationships of real and unreal time, and so forth to be expressed phrasally, to allow for maximum clarity of expression. If this is the case, one would expect a relatively analytic system, that is, one with few inflections.
- Traugott (1977), a pag.82