The claim
A63: “The useful distinction is between lexical retention and pragmatic retention.” A70: “This illustrates exactly why lexical similarity is inadequate for our theory: it cannot distinguish preservation of communicative footing from a substantial change in speech-act function … our primary outcome should be a measure of pragmatic-frame retention, not lexical retention. That requires independently elicited judgments about footing, stance, and communicative function, ideally without revealing which transmission condition produced each text.”
Manuscript §8: “The structural measurements are more informative than lexical comparisons alone. A chain might conserve the overspending theme while moving from speaker–audience solidarity to authoritative advice. Another might change nearly every word while preserving the invitation to shared recognition.”
What it does not say
That the authored chains show it (CASE-030, CASE-032). They illustrate it, and their pragmatic retention was asserted, not measured.
Note of 2026-10-29: revised
CLAIM-227 is granted. No design in the record gives judges a definition of footing, a response format beyond the analyst’s categories, a reliability target, or a validation against a contrast fixed in advance, and the analyst’s own labels of CASE-012’s refrains changed between A38 and A39. Until such a measure exists, the outcome this claim recommends is not yet a measurement, and a test of its defeat condition would test the categories as much as the claim. QUESTION-076 asks whether one can be had.
Note of 2026-10-29: what holds it back
It has had no evidence of its own since ARG-039 was Rejected, and no validated footing measure exists to test the defeat condition.