LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.06 (08) [E]

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06 December 2005 * Volume 08
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From: Paul Tatum <ptatum at blueyonder.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.06 (01) [E]

Hello Sandy and everyone,

Wor Sandy wrote:

> At which point do "I should cocoa!", "Tha'll burn
> in hell thee will, lad!", "You should be so lucky!", "A Jedi seeks not
> these things", "I enjoyed the party, I'm not saying that"*, "He don't
> want to go,"** "I'd rather be the devil to be that woman man,"*** or
> "It's got a certain je ne sais quoi," become not-English? They certainly
> all seem to be part of English discourse.

They may be English (I think they are) or not. But try to discuss
whether they are or not without using syntax.

> I'm not sure exactly why you think you need an infinite number of
> exemplars.
Because no matter how many exemplars you present I can always present
you with a new sentence that has no previous exemplar. Any sentence that
is longer than the longest exemplar does not have an exemplar for it.
So that new sentence must then become a new exemplar. Or you must allow
a rule which allows an exemplar to automatically be created from
previous exemplars - but that is syntax.

If we're thinking of the brain as processing language like a
> neural net, then we can expect the brain, like neural nets, to determine
> its own set of rules from the exemplars
Every child learning her/his mother tongue re-creates the rules of the
language from the sentences they hear - they learn how the language
works. And so the language slowly changes as rules become re-interpreted
  by each generation and are lost or added to.

> These days there are rules because grammarians have defined them - but
> language was working perfectly before grammarians came along.
I'm not telling you to make every sentence to be a noun phrase followed
by a verb phrase, (however dictatorial my personality). The rules are
not legal injunctions, but descriptions, in the same way that physical
laws are descriptions. Light doesn't travel at 299792.458 km/s. because
Einstein or somebody told it to but because that's the way light works.
The rules of syntax are inferred from the sentences by grammarians and
not the other way round.

TTFN, Paul "The Regulator" Tatum

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From: Ben J. Bloomgren <Ben.Bloomgren at asu.edu>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2005.12.06 (05) [E]

I would like to provide an example of my 2-year-old grandson's language 
acquisition.  He talks quite a bit, and seems to understand more than he can 
say.

Mark, my linguistics teacher told us that in Southeast Asia where he did his 
studies, they never use babytalk or motherese. "They talk at them, not to 
them." A guy that I know from church tried this method with a little girl 
that he was babysitting. He said that at first, she would hold full 
conversations with him in preverbal gibberish, but they then migrated to 
verbal expressions. Her parents were amazed that she suddenly began to talk 
when she had not expressed much interest in talking previously. He said that 
he just talked to her as if she were an adult, and she mimicked and imitated 
until God's programming language allowed her to enter the realm of our 
spoken language.
Ben 

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