"Don't Say Gay"

[Ronald Butters]

On Feb 16, 2012, at 11:52 PM, someone wrote:

>>> And it sounds perfectly normal, evidence that grammar is a construction fabricated from patterns in speech.

I don't understand this. Does it mean that children construct their grammars (at least in part) on the basis of the speech patterns that they hear? Could anyone disagree with that?

Or does it mean that linguists "fabricate" the rules of grammar based on "patterns" that they observe in nature? Again, this seems like a truism, except that "fabricate" has connotations that could suggest that grammatical rules are mere "fabrications" that have no parallel with the patterns of syntax that speakers of the language have in their heads. But that seems too silly to be the intended meaning.

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