[Corpora-List] Bootcamp: 'Quantitative Corpus Linguistics withR'--re Louw's endorsement

[Alexandre Rafalovitch]

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 9:22 AM, Mike Maxwell <maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu> wrote:
> Wolfgang Teubert wrote:
>  > So far, though, no language mechanism has ever been discovered, even
>  > though uncountable models have been invented. There also seems to be,
>  > particularly when it comes to meaning, a certain scarcity of 'brute
>  > facts'.
>
> My favorite brute fact (associated at least with syntax and morphology--
> I'll make no claims about semantics) is that every child, even those
> with mild retardation, learns a language without being taught.

How can this be a brute fact when every day you can see a  parent
constantly correcting child on how to say things either by directly
pointing the mistakes out or by repeating or rephrasing the same
things in the correct and accepted way. That's teaching in my books,
just not classroom style teaching.

Also, at least for the Russian language, syntax and morphology  is
drilled into the children heads during multiple years of schooling.
And you can tell the person who did not undertake that schooling and
just learned as much as possible through absorption.

I don't have a (strong) opinion on whether language facility is
built-in, but perhaps we should be taking about low barrier of entry
to language (any negotiated noise/signal would have an immediate
pay-off), as opposed to a high barrier of entry to more abstract
sciences where anything useful requires learning a large body of
knowledge first.

> Contrast
> this with the learning of math or science or history, where even with
> years of intensive teaching, not everyone learns it.

Again, isn't it because most of the math/science/history is somewhat
abstract and does not engage the same centers of the brain? On the
other hand, the schools spitting champion who is able to hit a target
at a large distance with correction for the current wind, has
certainly learned some of the scary-looking math and physics, even if
he (or she) never saw an equation for the earth gravity, vector
decomposition of forces, conversion between kinetic and potential
energy, etc. Same way, a child learning to walk will absorb enough
physics to do that task but will need higher education to learn
physics in space (unless they are born in orbit of course).

Regards,
  Alex.

Personal blog: http://blog.outerthoughts.com/
Research group: http://www.clt.mq.edu.au/Research/

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