The desire paths of language users and learners
I was out walking the other day and it being somewhat damp and muddy, I decided to stick to the paved pathway rather than take this more direct ‘path’. But as I did so, I started thinking that the this kind of path, which you see all over the place, could be a kind of metaphor for language change. We could see the paved path as the “standard model” of language, but then one day, someone decided that this standard model just didn’t suit their needs – that there was a route that fits better with what they wanted to say.
Asked whether they were enjoying something they were doing, our radical...