LaGuardia, La Bomba

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

As I have said here now at least twice, I have no intent to insult anyone.

The fact is that if people pronounce words without vowel reduction to schwa
or barred-i in unstressed suyllables they will sound hypercorrect (in layman's
terms, "stilted") to their auditors. My comments are not ad hominem.

It is also a fact that even linguists are notoriously poor analysts of their
own speech. People untrained in linguistics are likewise in the dark about
what they actually say in real-speech situations (probably moreso). No insult is
intended in presenting this elementary psycholinguistic fact. I am not saying
that people who misreport their own linguistic behavior are fools or frauds. I
am just reporting that self-reports--especially from nonlinguists--are known
to be highly unreliable. This is the sort of thing that one tells one's
students in the first week of class in Introduction to Linguistics.

Maybe I should feel insulted that someone should take offense at the
presentation of elementary linguistic facts? Nah. For the most part, people who
subscribe to ADS-L are usually interested in language, not in personalities.


In a message dated 2/9/09 1:31:00 AM, strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM writes:


> I don't understand the purpose of Ron's insults, but --
>




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