Say it Again

I have a quick survey for you. Just think about the question for a moment and then give your intuition about what the answer might be. Nobody knows the actual answer so this isn’t about being right or wrong, it will just shed some light on how we each think about communication.

The question is about the following concepts:

What percentage of the sentences that you speak are being spoken for the first time in human history?

For example, saying “I am hungry.” is not a new sentence but saying “I love the way George Clooney’s freshly painted toenails smell on a brisk spring morning.” probably has never been spoken before by anyone.

What percentage of sentences that you speak are new to you but not new in the history of human speech?

For example, it’s very likely that someone has said “How many empty bottles of tequila did you find?” but I’ve never said that particular sentence before now.

So basically, what’s the breakdown of the following three categories of sentences that you speak in a typical day?

1. Sentences that you’ve said before.

2. Sentences that you haven’t said but that someone else has probably said.

3. Sentences that nobody has ever spoken before in the history of humanity.

Notes:

Assume that proper nouns are interchangeable within their own categories in sentences, so “What did Alice eat for dinner in Paris last night?” would be equivalent to “What did Bob eat for dinner in Istanbul last night?”

Any sentence with the construction “What did [NAME] eat for dinner in [CITY] last night?” would be equivalent. Similarly, any sentence with the construction “[BAND] is my favorite band.” would be equivalent.

Conversely, “Pasta is my favorite food.” would not be equivalent to “Pizza is my favorite food.” because pasta and pizza are not proper nouns.

Also, assume that contractions are equivalent to their expanded counterparts so “don’t” is the same as “do not”.