--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...>
wrote:
>
But the paper raises some interesting ideas about what I term "wilful
language", i.e. pronouncing phonemes a certain way or using morphemes
a certain way by choice and with full awareness of what one is doing,
rather than by simple "natural" imitation of one's parents and peers.
This arises at the borders of dialect areas where people are aware of
both pronunciations of words or both usages, and can choose to use one
or the other, and are aware that they are choosing. In describing the
histories of languages linguists seldom make mention of choice or
will, I believe.
>
That's a memorable meme contributed to our common meme bank.
Lars