Dear All:

At the risk of being redundant, I'd like to stress that finding
construction X appears in a given students' writing before construction
Y does is not, in itself, evidence of an "organic" developmental
sequence. It's a precondition for such an interpretation, but it doesn't
mandate it. Establishing causation requires (at the minimum) examining
the widest possible variety of student-produced language from the widest
possible range of contexts and from the widest possible range of
students ("possible" here being determined by both theoretical and
pragmatic concerns). The main problem, as Ed has pointed out, is that
this kind of research is amazingly labor-intensive (forget CEOs;
Congress should fund Ed a legion of research assistants). 

--- Bill Spruiell

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