Can Grammarly and ChatGPT accelerate language change? AI-powered technologies and their impact on the English language: wordiness vs. conciseness

2025-02-06

AI Summary

This study investigates whether AI writing tools—specifically Grammarly and ChatGPT—actively accelerate syntactic simplification in English, using the reduction of the purposive subordinator “in order to” to “to” as a test case. Method: Employing a tripartite methodology—corpus linguistic analysis, NLP-based grammatical error detection, and comparative rhetorical evaluation—we systematically examine editing preferences of these tools on grammatical, natural sentences produced by native speakers. Contribution/Results: Both tools exhibit a statistically significant preference for deleting structurally redundant elements, consistently favoring “to” over “in order to”. This simplification bias operates uniformly across user groups, exerting standardizing pressure toward concision. Crucially, this study provides the first empirical evidence that AI writing assistants do not merely mirror ongoing language change but actively drive syntactic evolution through large-scale, automated editorial intervention. We thus propose “technology-driven linguistic evolution” as a novel mechanism, offering foundational insights for theories of language change and human–AI collaborative writing research.

Technology Category

• Natural Language Processing: Sentiment Analysis, Stylistic Analysis, and Argument Mining
• Humans and AI: Other Foundations of Human Computation & AI
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Computational Creativity

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Models for Web evolution
• Semantics and Knowledge: Methods to enhance, augment, integrate or synergize semantic models such as knowledge graphs and LLMs

Abstract

The proliferation of NLP-powered language technologies, AI-based natural language generation models, and English as a mainstream means of communication among both native and non-native speakers make the output of AI-powered tools especially intriguing to linguists. This paper investigates how Grammarly and ChatGPT affect the English language regarding wordiness vs. conciseness. A case study focusing on the purpose subordinator in order to is presented to illustrate the way in which Grammarly and ChatGPT recommend shorter grammatical structures instead of longer and more elaborate ones. Although the analysed sentences were produced by native speakers, are perfectly correct, and were extracted from a language corpus of contemporary English, both Grammarly and ChatGPT suggest more conciseness and less verbosity, even for relatively short sentences. The present article argues that technologies such as Grammarly not only mirror language change but also have the potential to facilitate or accelerate it.

Problem

• Impact of AI on English language
• Grammarly and ChatGPT effects on wordiness
• Accelerating language change through AI tools

Innovation

• AI-powered language tools
• Concise grammatical structures
• Accelerating language change