<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv=Content-Type>
<META content="MSHTML 5.00.2919.6307" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I meant to send this message to the whole list but
just realised I sent it only to Alexander Clark instead. Here's the main part of
the message:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>----- Alexander Clark wrote ----- ><BR>> I
agree this needs explanation, if it occurs with linguistically naive<BR>>
native speakers. Do you have any (non-anecdotal) evidence that this
is<BR>> the case? Most of the references I have on empirical work on
this<BR>> subject are negative results: for example Spencer (73),<BR>>
Labov (72, 75), Quirk and Svartvik (66). It seems that non-native<BR>>
speakers tend to disagree about the complex cases which is in conflict<BR>>
with the standard generativist<BR>> assumption that children converge to the
same grammar.<BR>><BR>> If you have any references, I'd be very grateful
for them,<BR><BR>For my PhD thesis, I investigated the assumption that
native<BR>speakers have a uniform underlying grammatical competence. In
agreement with<BR>what you say, the experimental literature indicates that, even
when<BR>performance factors are controlled for, significant differences can
be<BR>observed in the procedural grammatical competence of native speakers.
This<BR>literature is concerned mainly with sentence comprehension, as opposed
to<BR>grammaticality judgements, which are associated with numerous
methodological<BR>problems (see for instance Carson Shutze's 1996 The Empirical
Base of<BR>Linguistics, University of Chicago Press).<BR><BR>I also carried out
experiments of my own, in which I found a strong<BR>association between level of
formal education and the ability to comprehend<BR>complex syntax. This
association was so strong that non-native speakers of<BR>English who had been
highly educated in English actually performed better<BR>than less educated
native speakers of English in a test of sentence<BR>comprehension. One possible
explanation for this association is that<BR>grammatical knowledge is learned
gradually throughout life and that formal<BR>education is a particularly rich
source of linguistic experience. I'm told<BR>there is some corpus-based
corroborative evidence for this hypothesis in<BR>Geoffrey Sampson's Empirical
Linguistics (2001, Continuum) , but I'm still<BR>waiting to get my
copy.<BR><BR>Come to think of it, there are a number of correspondences between
findings<BR>from corpus linguistics and 'non-Chomskyian psycholinguistics' (for
want of<BR>a better term) which might interest members of this list. I can
expand on<BR>this if people are interested.<BR><BR><BR>best
regards,<BR><BR><BR>*********************************************************<BR>Ngoni
Chipere<BR>Research Fellow<BR>School of Education, University of
Reading<BR>Bulmershe Court, Earley, Reading, RG6 1HY, UK<BR>tel 0118 9875123 ext
4943<BR><BR><BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>