Illustrative of my claim that everyone makes performance blunders, I wrote "a grammatical expert in either of the first two sentences" when my brain intended "first two senses." Dick On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 8:12 PM, Dick Veit <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > "Grammar expert" has multiple senses, including but not limited to the > following: > > *Sense 1*: A grammar expert has a theoretical knowledge of the syntax of a > language. Such a person is able, among other things, to parse sentences and > has the knowledge necessary to teach a course in grammar. > > *Sense 2*: A grammar expert speaks and writes a prestigious dialect in a > way that most educated speakers would consider to be largely free from > grammatical errors. > > *Sense 3*: A grammar expert is someone who is able to speak and comprehend > at least one dialect of a language (whether or not prestigious) and can > produce sentences which conform to the operating syntactic principles of > that dialect without giving conscious thought to the process of doing so. > > To my knowledge no one has ever claimed that every native speaker of a > language is a grammatical expert in either of the first two sentences. On > the other hand, many have claimed that every native speaker of a dialect is > a grammar expert in that dialect (sense 3). The argument for the latter goes > like this: > > It is true that everyone (even the experts in senses 1 and 2) makes > occasional performance blunders when speaking. However, they otherwise speak > grammatically with little conscious effort. A speaker of a certain American > dialect might say, "I ain't got none of them big green bean plants." That > speaker would never say "big them bean green plants" or "them bean plants > green big" or any of a dozen other combinations which could be grammatical > in some other hypothetical dialect but happen not to be grammatical in > theirs. While most speakers could never articulate the principles that guide > their syntactic choices, they make those choices with nearly invariable > precision and would instantly recognize violations by others. Because all > grammars (of prestigious and non-prestigious dialects alike) are > impressively complex and sophisticated, the mastery of them that native > speakers have achieved qualifies them as grammar experts in sense 3. > > One can simultaneously believe that very few people are grammar experts and > that everyone's a grammar expert--just not in the same sense. > > Dick > 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/