I find if I listen closely to my inner voice, it starts going in a circle for exactly this reason. This makes me think maybe the actual order is backwards and the voice comes second, but it feels first because brains are weird.
Right, my point is there is some point at which our "generation" of dialogue transitions from subconscious to conscious. This is true for people with or without inner dialogs.
Agreed. I don't need to be convinced because I definitely do some language related tasks without using my normal, chatty inner monologue. For example, when I try to speak Japanese via an English inner monologue, it's extremely slow. To be fluent I need to just go straight to Japanese, preferably without thinking at all.