Variation?

[Carl Mills]

As Bill Croft points out "Variation is an essential property of
language, even that of 'monolinguals'."

As we sociolinguists have been pointing out for nearly 4 decades, most
linguists, including functionalists, have been so steeped in what
Chambers has called "the tradition of categoricity" that they never
truly internalize the principle Bill has reminded us of.  As Sapir put
it, "All grammars leak."


Carl