LL-L "Grammar" 2005.11.30 (03) [E]

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30 November 2005 * Volume 03
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From: heather rendall <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.29 (04) [A/E]

Message text written by INTERNET:lowlands-l at LOWLANDS-L.NET
> Sorry if this sounds too much like a rant.<

Sounds like a lot of common sense to me,  Ian!

I have always felt a gut reaction against Chomsky and his universal grammar
and the more I have read the more I felt the same / similar reactions.
They seem to have ignored the fact that words are the end result of
language not the impetus.

I always see such linguists as Alice (small) looking up at table (tall) and
wondering how to get the biscuit to make herself tall enough to get the key
from the table. If only they would look round they would see the door was
open!

<<Let me give you an example. "Today no kiss" is obviously not a
well-formed English sentence, although I dislike the word
"ungrammatical">>

This is an example of chunks language; and chunks learning is an important
step in learning all languages - whether mother tongue or foreign. We all
go through it - some slower than others. It is not that it is
ungrammatical;  it is a pre-grammatical form - one in which sequence is all
and ideas are invariable. An essential pre-cursor to the normal sentence
structure of whichever language it is to develop into.

Heather

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