novel sentences/folk psychology

[David Hargreaves]

It seems to me useful to distinguish two issues here. First, there are
the empirical questions regarding the biological/cognitive status of
generative rules vs constructions and so on.  Second, there are the
questions regarding the "folk psychology" of language rules. Let me
address the latter: In teaching thousands of undergraduates over the
last six years at CSU, Chico, a small state school in California that
requires an Intro to Linguistics and Intro to Second Language
Acquisition for all (k-12) teaching credential candidates, I have
learned never to underestimate the depth t o which a naive behaviorism
is part of the folk psychology of not only undergraduates, but also
faculty in Education, Social Sciences, and the Humanities. The naive,
but deeply held, intuitions that parents "teach" their children
language, that language structure is "conditioned" by culture, that
grammatical systematicity and material/intellectual culture are
coextensive, and that language learning is mostly "memorizing phrases"
are still widely shared across the social and intellectual landscapes.
In this sense, giving undergraduates a close look at the evidence and
arguments about "novel sentences," especially L1 and L2 errors, the
"poverty of the stimulus," "colorless green ideas," and other mainstays
of the linguistics introduction still function as powerfully persuasive
tools for real intellectual and attitudinal growth by the socially
important population of K-12 teachers, not to mention faculty in Ed,
Soc.Sci, and Humanities. And even though funknetters have had much to
say about the shortcomings of Pinker's "Language Instinct" and the Human
Language Video series, both have worked for me in opening the eyes of
many an undergraduate as well as faculty. The "Standard Social Science
Model" to which Pinker refers is alive and well in various incarnations
of postmodernism, cultural studies, multiculturalism, and other common
themes in contemporary undergraduate programs in the US, especially
teacher training programs, in which language as an information
processing and embodied cognitive system plays second fiddle to the
focus on socioeconomic and cultural determination of language form and
content. I've had some success with a bait and switch routine: the old
arguments still work to undermine the naive behaviorism which then sets
the stage for bringing in cognitive/functionalist questions. It seems to
work, at least some of the time. -david hargreaves