My understanding of Chomskyan linguistic theory is that it does _not_ claim that grammar is innate. What is innate - what Chomsky calls Universal Grammar (UG) - is a set of principles that constrain the development of an actual grammar. The development occurs over time as the innate principles interact with the linguistic input the child hears in his or her environment.
I don't believe that a Chomskyan theory of language would claim that the grammatical structures characteristic of higher levels of literacy - the kinds of structures that interest writing teachers - are learned automatically. Any writing teacher knows that they obviously are not. For one thing, within such a theory, many of these constructions are not _direct_ reflections of Universal Grammar principles. For instance, I don't know of any postulated UG principle that would lead directly to sentences where the complement of a verb is moved away from the verb and preposed to the front of the sentence. It is my understanding that a Chomskyan theory would claim that such constructions are responses to communicative pressures such as the need to maintain topic continuity in a developing discourse. Although the grammar permits such movement of elements to unusual positions in the sentence, language learners/students need experience and some practice before they feel comfortable with these kinds of sentences - in this case because UG does stipulate that verbs and their complements are adjacent. Also complicating matters here is that such constructions are generally more frequently encountered in middle grades of schooling when written texts begin to contain more "sophisticated" language. By age 12, assuming some version of a Critical Period hypothesis, children are probably beyond the period where they acquire language with minimal input or attention.
If anyone on the list has objections, clarifications, etc., feel free to come in.
Jim Kenkel, Eastern KY University
________________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Castilleja, Janet [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2008 6:47 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Mixed construction (was A short note on...)
Just out of curiosity, did Chomsky ever actually say that grammar was
innate? Or did he say the potential to acquire grammar was innate?
Wouldn't that be a very different thing?
Janet Castilleja
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Robert Yates
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2008 2:57 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Mixed construction (was A short note on...)
Bill,
Your speculation on why they occur are all plausible. I would just
observe that your explanations require appeals to various language
principles interacting with each other. Such observations don't seem to
match with a claim that our knowledge of language is strictly based on
exposure to the language.
Of course, you may be right here.
"I suspect we *do* encounter a lot of those mixed constructions -- we
just don't encounter them in writing. I know I've heard quite a few on
news broadcasts and the like. "
On the other hand, it is interesting to note that Biber et al. in the
Grammar of Spoken and Written English do not index "mixed construction"
and all of the references to "by" makes no mention of them. If they are
frequent in the spoken language, this absence is strange.
This is not the case elsewhere. For example, Biber et al. mention
prefaces.
(1) This woman, she's ninety.
It notes that prefaces occur in conversation and not in academic
writing. (p. 964).
So, Biber et al. do note structures that occur only in the spoken
language.
**
Let's clear up something about "my view" of such forms in developing
writing.
Bill writes: ". . . in your view, they're probably performance errors
and quite separate from what might count as evidence for linguistic
competence."
I'm interested in trying to understand why developing writers do what
they do. I take a developmental perspective on such constructions.
From the developing writer's perspective, I don't think these are
performance errors. Rather, they represent something about such
writer's competence. I think teaching needs to begin with where the
student is, so a perspective that tries to understand the writer's
principles is much more useful pedagogically than a perspective that
says this is what the writer should be doing.
One of the problems I have with systemic functional linguistics is that
it really doesn't provide any insights into why developing writers do
what they do. Halliday is quite clear his perspective of language is not
about what a language user knows. Likewise, the belief that our
knowledge of language is based solely on the language we have been
exposed to doesn't offer much of an explanation except to speculate
perhaps these structures are in the oral language and just haven't been
noticed.
Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
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