Scott, 
I am not quite sure what you mean by repetition, but it is clearly the case we know rules/principles about our native language that are difficult to find in the input. 

>>> Scott Woods >>>
I meant to say, Does anyone disagree with the claim that people typically need repetition of input and output to learn language?

Here is an example.  All native speakers of English recognize the following is a possible sentence in English.  

1) There is the woman whose daughter my daughter is smarter than.    

I wonder how many times we have ever encountered a relative clause with the genitive of the object of the comparative being relativized.

Other examples available on request.  

The following pairs of sentences are interesting with respect to what the nature of input and output is that made it possible for all of us proficient in English to know that sentences 2 and 3 have different meanings because of the pronoun deletion, but 4 and 5 have the same meaning    

2) Mary wants someone to work for her.
3) Mary wants someone to work for.

4) These are the letters Mary threw away without reading them.
5) These are the letters Mary threw away without reading. 

It is unclear to me that these sentences pose problems for people are less than a standard deviation IQ score below the mean.

Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri



Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/