Herb (and others) - 

Thank you for the replies to my emails lately.  They've been very helpful
and cleared up some of my confusion.  At least you know I'm paying
attention, right?

So, to give a simple version back, what we're agreeing on is that the
innateness of language exists.  Where we seem to disagree is in the "natural
use" of grammar - some feel it happens without instruction, others that it
requires instruction.

Or, to put it another way, a young child might say "This is my sock" but
that does NOT mean the child knows which of these words the subject is, what
a noun is, or how to define a possessive pronoun.  It is our job as
instructors to explain how the grammar rules work to the child, who can then
apply the rules to create ever more complex concepts.

Therefore what we're disagreeing on is the method, or the process, and not
necessarily the speech patterns of children in general.

I know that's all very simplified - I'm trying to wrap my head around what
the essential arguments are and it's easier for me to repeat back than it is
to assume and then be wrong later.

-patty



-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stahlke, Herbert F.W.
Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2006 8:52 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: On innate knowledge of language

Patty,

I suspect Bob, Johanna, and I might all answer your question in slightly
different ways, but we'd probably agree on the major points.

When we speak of innateness, we're talking about the hypothesis that
detailed information about the structure of language is part of our genetic
endowment.  When we learn our first language, this innate knowledge knows
what to expect and what to look for.  As a specific language is acquired,
rules and principles of this innate grammar are refined to suit the date of
the particular language, but the nature of Language doesn't change.  Just
the individual instantiation of language.  The rules that we talk about
children learning early on are facts of language, generalizations that allow
the child to become a speaker quickly.  The rules of tag formation that
Johanna has alluded to are rules of this type.  We know them as English
speakers in the sense that we produce question tags correctly pretty
consistently.  We don't--and don't have to--know them consciously unless we
have studied them.  The rules that we write as grammarians, as
representations of the rules we've learned in the acquisition process, are
just that, representations, approximations.  They are part of a theory of
language, which will necessarily change as our understanding improves.  Many
of our statements of rules are pretty good, but keep in mind that as
understanding of linguistics improves, models change to reflect that.  Until
about 1995, virtually all of phonology involved rules of some sort, rules
that applied in a particular order.  Since that time, rules are out and
variously ranked constraints are in because they account for a lot of
phonological phenomena better.  Theories change as we test them against
data, a normal process of science.

The rules of grammar that we want to teach children are pedagogically sound
versions of the scientific knowledge.  This claim is what leads to much of
the debate over what should be taught.  We can't and shouldn't want to
transfer the theoretical models of science directly into the K12 classroom.
But we should work out the best pedagogically-sound rules we can and present
that information at appropriate levels in K12.

As to the notion "critical period", the anomolous cases of stimulus-deprived
children, like Genie, don't prove a linguistic critcal period.  They
demonstrate rather that cognition and language are closely interdependent
and neither can develop normally if the other is impaired.  Genie was
cognitively severely impaired by the age of 12 because she had been denied
linguistic stimulus since 18 months.  By 12, that cognitive impairment was
extensive enough to severely limit language learning.

Herb

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