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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