On the topic of "evidence that 'native speakers' are 'experts' in their own
language":

One could teach a college course called "The Grammar of Everyday Speech"
exploring the syntactic principles that underlie the language of average
people who speak a more-or-less standard American dialect. (That is
basically the syntax course I taught for over 30 years.)  At the end of the
semester students would discover that (1) one semester is not nearly
adequate to cover the topic and (2) the syntax of even casual speech is
extraordinarily complex and sophisticated. One could also teach a course
called "The Grammar of an Average 8-Year-Old" and draw the very same
conclusions.

It is unquestionably true that native and non-native speakers who are fluent
in a language have internalized an impressive body of knowledge. An
8-year-old might be incapable of mastering the rules of a game like chess
despite repeated exposure but will have mastered language rules that are a
hundred times more complicated.

It is in that sense--and *only *that sense--that our students come to us as
language "experts." Most of them have little conscious knowledge of the
principles they have internalized. A good many of them are poor writers and
inarticulate speakers. These "experts" are in our classes because they need
training to become even close to expert in other important senses.

One might make a credible case against the above position. One's case cannot
be credible, however, if one confuses one sense of "expert" with another.

Dick

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