Re: _Verum Et Factum Convertuntur_ (or: Surprised By Syntax)

On 7 Jun 2005 13:13:38 -0500, Herman Rubin
<hrubin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:d84o4i$2b80@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in sci.lang:

> In article <d82psf$qgi$1$8302bc10@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> Colin Fine <news@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>>Herman Rubin wrote:

[...]

>>> Possibly in high school, the various students came from
>>> regions speaking essentially the same dialect, in which
>>> little, if anything, precise was discussed, other than
>>> possibly spelling of words, or the application of
>>> computational rules, without any understanding.

>> Here you go again with the patronising assumption that if
>> they are not speaking a standard dialect then they are
>> incapable of precision.

[...]

> I see these students, and assure you that the
> communication gap is that great.

No, it isn't, even at Cleveland State, and I'd be very much
surprised if students at Purdue were on average worse
prepared than ours.

>>> A possible reason Dean Fish had the success he had is
>>> that children pick up a good deal of grammar before
>>> they learn too much vocabulary, so they still retain
>>> some of the structure of their native language even
>>> after the schools had ignored it for all those years.

>> This is nonsense. Children learn vocabulary at a
>> phenomenal rate, during the time they are learning
>> grammar and for some time after. Most people throughout
>> the world retain more or less all of the structure of
>> their native language throughout their lives, unless
>> they move away from other speakers of it.

> Is the rate "phenomenal"?

Yes.

> Comparing the vocabulary expected after my one year of
> college French with the vocabulary of an 8 year old, I
> would have to say that mine was greater.

It would appear that either you have a very poor notion of
the vocabulary of an 8-year-old, or you took an
exceptionally demanding French course.

[...]

Brian
.

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