Patty, To help clarify your question about "rules", you need to distinguish between two kinds of knowledge – ability to do something complex without having to think through the steps, vs. the ability to describe how something is done. With regard to language, this is often described as the difference between being able to _talk_ (speak and understand language automatically) and being about to _talk ABOUT_ language. Everyone who has normal language ability (and that is nearly everyone) in whatever language has the first kind of "knowledge", which I prefer to think of as "ability". The second kind, conscious knowledge of the definitions of terms like "subject", or the ability to identify the direct object of a sentence and call it that, has to be consciously learned, either by self-teaching from books or experimentation or by being taught by someone else. Both kinds of knowledge consist of rules: the word "rule" in linguistics doesn't refer so much to a "do-don't" type rule, like rules of etiquette, but rather just a fixed pattern for creating a certain linguistic element, like a sentence or a phrase. In English, the verb usually comes between the subject and other material in the sentence; in Japanese, the verb is always at the end of the sentence, with the subject first, and things like direct objects in between. I often explain it this way: think of a swimming coach explaining to a trainee how to execute an efficient stroke. The coach is talking _about_ swimming, not doing it. When you chuck an infant into deep water and it swims (and they do, up to a certain age), it is using its unconscious ability to swim. The kid can't talk at all yet, let alone talk _about_ anything, and nobody taught it to swim. It is operating by instinct. There is something instinctual about language learning; what linguists are arguing about is the degree to which language has instincts (and, literally, brain parts) reserved only for it, which dictate which structures are possible in language, or whether more-general cognitive abilities (such as the ability to generalize over a range of similar experiences, or to switch between having an object in the foreground and in the background, like the "faces/vase" diagrams) are used to develop knowledge of language. Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics Linguistics Minor Advisor English Department California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo E-mail: [log in to unmask] Tel.: 805.756.2184 Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596 Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374 URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba 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/