Interesting, Herb.  I know a child and know of one other who could  
"speak volumes" before they knew any words.  Vocal patterns just flew  
out of them at a VERY early age.

Ed Schuster

On Dec 9, 2008, at 8:50 PM, STAHLKE, HERBERT F wrote:

> There does appear to be some language-specific knowledge that we  
> have at birth, knowledge of the prosodics of our mother's tongue.   
> While the subtleties of consonant and vowel acoustics don't pass  
> through skin, subcutaneous fat, muscle, amniotic fluid, and other  
> tissues, changes in loudness, pitch, and duration appear to.  There  
> is observational and experimental evidence that neonates already  
> have some productive and receptive knowledge of intonation, stress,  
> and rhythm.  This is, however, not innate, because it differs from  
> language to language.  It's learned from the time the fetus's  
> hearing begins to function.
>
> Herb
>
> Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
> Emeritus Professor of English
> Ball State University
> Muncie, IN  47306
> [log in to unmask]
> ________________________________________
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask] 
> ] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: December 9, 2008 5:53 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Mixed construction (was A short note on...)
>
> Just to chime in on Herb's point a bit (and apologies in advance to  
> Herb if I'm mischiming) --
>
> In at least one of the generative models, UG was viewed as  
> specifying (among other things) that children were born expecting  
> that there would be at least two distinct lexical classes that serve  
> as heads of phrases (this was to reflect the observation that all  
> languages seem to have something like a noun/verb distinction, but  
> without entailing that there was some kind of *semantic*  
> universality to nouns and verbs). One of the fundamental statements  
> about the structure of sentences was (is?) that they have two parts,  
> and each part is a projection of something different (a sentence  
> cannot, for example, be "noun phrase + noun phrase" by default; it  
> has to be "NP + VP," etc.). The *order* of the two parts varies from  
> language to language, as does the degree to which the order is  
> fixed, but the claim is that that binary split exists in all  
> languages. This position entails that the child doesn't have to  
> "deduce" the lexical split from input; s/he arrives expecting one,  
> and simply has to figure out which actual words go in which category.
>
> That kind of stipulation is rather obviously internal to Language- 
> with-a-capital-L. Innate knowledge of lexical categories isn't  
> innate knowledge of, say, the entrée/dessert distinction. Opposing  
> theories attempt to account for the universality, or near- 
> universality, of the noun/verb distinction by appealing to a mix of  
> general processing strategies and perceptual constraints (e.g. short- 
> term memory constraints favor a message design in which old  
> information is regularly repeated so that it won't be lost; old  
> information is positioned as "static" since it's *not* what's  
> focused on, and words for objects (the prototypical noun) refer to  
> comparatively static phenomena, leading to a conflation between "old  
> information" and "the class of words that includes words for  
> objects").
>
> We still, alas, have no licensed telepaths able to scan the thought  
> processes of one-year-olds, so it's difficult to "prove" either of  
> those positions.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Bill Spruiell
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask] 
> ] On Behalf Of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
> Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2008 4:31 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Mixed construction (was A short note on...)
>
> Chomsky posited a Language Acquisition Device as a "mental organ."   
> It was that that made rapid acquisition possible.  As the theory of  
> Universal Grammar began to take shape, it was seen as fleshing out  
> the LAD.  Chomsky's position was that we are genetically endowed not  
> just with a capacity for language learning, something that most  
> cognitivists would agree with, but rather with a knowledge of  
> Language, not of a specific language but of the principles by which  
> all human language operates.  One of the best recent presentations  
> of the innatist view is Mark Baker's The Atoms of Language: The  
> Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar (Basic Books 2002).
>
> Herb
>
> Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
> Emeritus Professor of English
> Ball State University
> Muncie, IN  47306
> [log in to unmask]
> ________________________________________
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask] 
> ] On Behalf Of Patricia Lafayllve [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: December 9, 2008 10:22 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Mixed construction (was A short note on...)
>
> Janet asks a good question, and one I have been wracking my brain  
> around...
>
> My assumption has always been that language is innate, and the  
> potential to
> acquire grammar is *(probably)* innate, but that grammar in and of  
> itself
> needs to be learned...
>
> Or am I remembering all that wrong? *wink*  It is possible!
>
> -patty
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Castilleja, Janet
> 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
>
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