storage and computation

John Myhill john at RESEARCH.HAIFA.AC.IL
Tue Oct 13 13:31:49 UTC 1998


I've been quite interested to read here about specific findings regarding
how people learn language. As I have been observing the linguistic development
of my now 6-year-old daughter, I have been coming to the conclusion that
anyone who thinks that children develop their language by relying more on
rule generalization than on retrival either doesn't have children or
doesn't pay any attention to what they say. I have repeatedly attempted to
use Hebrew morphology playfully to make jokes with Shayna and I have
repeatedly been disappointed that she just doesn't get it, even though she
can use the morphological forms she's already encountered perfectly. I have
struggled mightily to explain to her the subregularities in the Hebrew
morphological system, but this has no effect whatsoever. She transparently
has no clue of the morphological structure of the agglutinative Japanese
forms she uses regularly.
Unfortunately for linguistics, the formalists whose worldview would most
benefit from the findings reported in some of the recent postings here
aren't interested
in experiments which take them out of their armchairs.
John Myhill



More information about the Funknet mailing list