Re: First language acquisition

"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:1158185721.313411.39050@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:



Then you'd better define "utterance." If it's not part of a language
(yet), then obviously there's no grammar.

If what you wrote earlier is correct ("linguists who have recorded
their babies' every utterance..."), then it is the linguists who have to
explain how they decide that when something is just meaningless noise
and when something is an utterance. Otherwise it is difficult to see
what this "a rudimentary grammar is in operation from the very first
utterances" actually means.



it. It may get more complex very quickly, but not very first few
utterances which, as far as I can see, are largely mimicking of what
the parents say (which they often repeated over and over again to the
baby before it can even speak). I don't really know what the
linguists means when they say "from the very first utterances", what
time period are they talking about and do they mean "meaningful
utterances"?

Depends, I guess, on what you mean by "utterances." I don't think a
psycholinguist would consider an act of mimicry to be an utterance.


As far as I'm concerned, an utterance is the noise that comes out of
your mouth that sounds like a word or a sequence of words. If I don't
know what it means, does it matter? (i.e. if I repeated something in
another language that I don't understand, have I not made an utterance?)



.

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