ABSTRACT: Have we come to the end of the sentence? This essay assesses the role of sentences in the default styles of the chatbots and takes occasion to consider its historical affordances as a form of exteriorization—one that coordinates linguistic elements and bounds revision. Tracing writing from its non-sentential origins through early modern grammatical theory makes clear that sentences are not the fundamental unit of writing but a culturally emergent compromise between temporal sequence and conceptual simultaneity. Attention to handwriting, word processing, and interactions with large language models shows how vertical layout, modularity, and symbolic substitution interact with sentence-centered prose. Speaking back on behalf of the sentence are Renee Gladman's prose architectures, city-sentences that offer an image of sentence-thinking as a form of life.
Jeff Dolven (Mon,) studied this question.
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