of course, if you say he is "gaiting" in my area, you could equally well be describing a horse at the walk or a gallop.
--vicka Okay, this is several different threads getting mixed into one discussion. I want to address common vs specialized or professional language. I understand your point about common use of langauage. I have in the dim, dark past a PhD minor in Cognitive psychology, including study of Psycholingustics. Not up to your credentials or experience, but I am not totally ignorant. We all to adjust our speech for the intended audience. In my area of the west many people refer to all easy gaited horses as "shufflers", a term the old cowboys used for the original appallosa's gait. If I was talking to one of these people I might well call my SSH a "shuffler". Or to another audience I might say my horse is "in her second gear gait". (I agree that who ever started calling our horses gaited did muddy the waters -- of course all horses have multiple gaits.) However, this forum is not a "general" nor a regional audience. It is specifically for people who are seriously interested in easy gaited horses, so we use more "precise" terms. Just as you talk about lingustics differently to us than you would in a scholarly article. So, for the this forum can we all agree to the terminology in Lee's book? Kat
