Re: Why can't daddy?

André G. Isaak wrote:

In article <17505.35504.364603.878266@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Aidan Kehoe <kehoea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Your assertion is that all those who learned the language of the community
around them during the critical period learned it perfectly? Detective
Sergeant Maureen Watson of the Police Department of Seguin, in rural Texas,
provides an easy counterexample to that:

â*?Watson told News 4 WOAI, "We believe the gate of the cattle trailer came
open, and the cow, for lack of a better phrase spilled out onto the
Interstate. It was pretty chaotic for a while."â*?

That is, she realised something wasnâ*?t right with using â*?cowâ*? as a plural,
but she couldnâ*?t come up with â*?cattleâ*? in a comfortable amount of time, so
she used the much marked â*?for lack of a better phraseâ*? instead. Thatâ*?s
imperfect command of a language, if anything is.

Three points:

(1) I don't know of anyone who claims people learn language perfectly.

Didn't you read the message you replied to? That's _exactly_ what I
said, and it's the fundamental premiss of linguistics. Every native
speaker is an absolute authority about their native language(s).

Aidan: turn off the fucking curly quotes.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.