Re: Do Children Learn Languages at Different Rates?

Peter T. Daniels:

> Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>>
>> Fri, 06 Jan 2006 17:38:30 GMT: "Peter T. Daniels"
>> <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:
>>
>> >Language evolved.
>> >
>> >It evolved to the point of greatest "fitness," and that "fitness" did
>> >not include any constraints on word order or inflection;
>>
>> Yes it does, there constraints. Read the paper and you'll see:
>> http://cnl.psych.cornell.edu/papers/LandC-cogsci2002.pdf
>>
>> >those are some of the available options.
>>
>> Yes. But within strict word orders, not all permutations of S, V and O
>> are equally learnable. The article experimentally demonstrates that
>> with neural nets, and it is in line with statistics about real
>> languages.
>
> That is simply bull***.
>
> Natural languages exist with _every_ permutation of S, V, and O as their
> basic word order

But how many fingers do you need to count the OVS languages?

> (though typologists have noted that the position of S
> has no bearing on typological properties). There is no reason to suppose
> that, say, Tagalog is an inferior language in terms of acquisition.

.

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