"Don't Say Gay"

[Benjamin Barrett]

On Feb 17, 2012, at 10:24 AM, Ronald Butters wrote:

> 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.

The someone was and is I :)

Linguistics is subject to scrutiny just as any natural and social science is. Mathematicians wonder whether math is a human invention or a natural phenomenon, a puzzle that might be solved if we encounter exomathematics. Whether linguists are seeing grammar rules in patterns that are in fact only patterns, or whether grammar rules are something that come out of a syntactic black box is a question that has surely not been resolved yet.

A counter to what I said was provided on this thread by Gerald Cohen who notes the utterance is a syntactic blend. A similar issue was raised on this list a few years ago along the lines of "Can I help who's/whoever's next?"

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA

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