comprehension and production

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear Info-CHILDES,

Sorry to interrupt this remarkable discussion of early syntax, the press,
music, and the Labour Party with a more mundane note.  This has to do with
the dissociation between comprehension and production of info-childes
messages.  Several people have noted that they can receive info-childes
messages, but are unable to post.  This happens when you have set a
forwarding address from some older account to the account that you are
actually currently using.  Your mailer politely forwards the letters and
hence you have good "comprehension".  However, when you go to post from
your new account, the listserver software at CMU on my machine checks your
"From" field and finds that it does not match up with anything on the list.

The solution here is to always unsubscribe from an old account by sending
in an "unsubscribe" message from that account and then resubscribing from
the new account.  If you don't have access to your old account, then just
send a message to kelley.sacco at cmu.edu and ask her to change your address.
That's it.

If you get into this situation, imagine how a child must feel when unable
to produce words because of articulatory processes, memory limitations, and
pragmatic worries, despite having all that wonderful advanced linguistic
competence!

--Brian MacWhinney