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Date: | Wed, 7 Jul 2010 16:22:39 -0400 |
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William,
My study of language acquisition among youngsters says that 5 year-olds have difficulty with passive constructions, too. I would think that having learned the NVN pattern in most English clauses leads them to that misinterpretation.
Of course, there's much more to the story than just that.
Marshall
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2010 3:31 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Interesting (but maybe problematic) study
I ran across the following in ScienceDaily today. It's the kind of research result for which I'd really, really want to see multiple followup studies. The researchers found that a proportion of their (adult) test subjects couldn't understand passive sentences; I can't help suspecting that the journalist hyped the results in some way or there are other factors involved. Population variation in comprehension of particular constructions is something I think is highly likely (absolute phrases, anyone?), but.... the passive? That's always struck me as part of the basic toolkit.
At any rate, I thought it might be of interest to the list, even if I want to take it with a bucket of salt. -- Bill Spruiell
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100706082156.htm
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