Аннотация: As is widely known, spontaneous spoken language stands out in fragmented and non-integrated chunks of language. The latter are the result of syntactic “accidents”, which are indispensible elements of spontaneous talk. Syntactic accidents may differ in their formal, lexical, and distributional features. With these features in mind, we single out three main varieties of syntactic accidents: 1. maxi-accidents, 2. mini-accidents and 3. micro-accidents, which collectively constitute one whole paradigm.
In the scope of this article, the main focus of analysis is on micro-accidents in spontaneous talk of native speakers of English. Based on the empirical data, the analysis outlines some of the functional properties of micro-accidents, such as distributional characteristics and the reasons behind them.