AMy,

Good point.  This occurred to me.  Maybe knowledge of formal grammar
could be compared with (say) literary knowledge as a predictor of general
vocabulary or maybe the question should concern the correlation between
understanding of grammatical categories and general cultural literacy, in
Hirsch's sense, rather than general vocabulary.  If understanding grammar
is really as valuable as we all believe it is, it ought to correlate with
SOMETHING. Anyway, thanks for the feedback!


On Thu, 20 Jul 2000 [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Interesting hypothesis, Dave. I'm guessing that a person who understands the
> metalanguage is likely to also have an interest  in words and that interest
> itself would account for a richer vocabulary. Well, the interest in words and
> the knowledge of grammatical terminology would work symbiotically.
> Nevertheless, I would love to know more about how such a relationship works.
> Amy Benjamin
>