>. . . Most knowledge of language
> is deeply subconscious. It seems especially difficult to get people to
> stand outside of language and look at it scientifically, especially since
> you have to use language itself to talk about the data. I have noticed
> that a lot of students have genuine difficutly accessing their intuitions
> about language;
 
As usual, Joanna has made some very thoughtful and acute observations.
I believe (and there is some empirical evidence to back this view up)
that students can best access their intuitions about language through
another language.  For that reason alone, it is a pity that the
reading-translation method of foreign language study has fallen in
disfavour (althought there are some good reasons for that too).
However, there is still the study of classical languages that allow
students to compare and contrast and discover what in many ways they
already know.  Vatican II has a lot to account for.
 
Mieke
 
Mieke Koppen Tucker
Bishop's University
Lennoxville, Quebec, Canada
 
. . .
> Feeling secure about explanations that are
> gotten in this enterprise can only come from looking very carefully at the
> entire verbal (and other) systems of the language in question, as well as
> looking for support for those explanations in many languages of the
> world.