Judy Diamondstone wrote:

> >Consider the following pairs.
> >
> >        a) Bob likes the decision to acquit the President
> >        b) The decision pleases Bob.

>         SFG defines "grammar" differently. That's its point.
>         The grammar of a language is described as three simultaneous
>         ("metafunctional") systems. So Bob is the experiencer in both
>         sentences. SFG would say that the "ideational metafunction" of
>         grammar is realized in the same way (as "Bob") in
>         both sentences. However, both "subject" (considered
>         as part of the interpersonal metafunction of grammar)
>         and "first position" or sentence theme (considered as part of
>         the textual metafunction of grammar) are different for the 2 sentences.
>
>         SFG describes grammar as a system that evolved to serve
>         these different functions.
>
>         And it correlates the metafunctions of the (lexico)grammatical
>         system with the sorts of environmental pressures that the system
>         has responded to (the "field" "tenor" and "mode" dimensions of
>         register)

I am confused.  So, how did the system "evolve" in just that way that
for some
verbs the experiencer is the grammatical subject and for others the
experiencer
is the grammatical object.


>         SFG does not presuppose that children learn only the language, exactly
>         the language, that they have heard or spoken. That's a strawperson
>         argument from the Chomsky school. I didn't mean to suggest anything
>         like that, but I'm not sure that I have the language at this point
>         to explain better what I mean. I will work at it though.

I look forward to it.  Just a couple of points:

I would love to know why you dismiss my example as "a strawperson
argument."  It seems to me that this rather trivial aspect of the
knowledge that ALL native speakers have about English has some very
profound implications.

        1) We have knowledge about our language for structures that we have
never heard.  ALL NATIVE SPEAKERS HAVE THE SAME KNOWLEDGE AS MEASURED BY
SHARED JUDGMENTS.  Where does that shared knowledge come from if such
structures have never been heard before?

        2) On this list, we are all language educators. I define that as
educating our students about the nature of language and the nature of
the knowledge our students have about language.  To think that our
students already know a lot about language that has never been taught is
good news for them and focuses our attention on what we need to teach
and how we need to teach it.  Hardly being made of straw, I think the
example of grandstand is an important foundation to think about what we
do.


Finally, in the correction message:

                Spoken language and language "competence"
                are interactive not only for the child
                learning language (ontogenetically)
                but also for a language-speaking
                species (phylogenetically)

I am not quite sure what this means.  Language changes and norms
change.  So? I am reminded of Norman Fairclough's "The appropriacy of
`appropriateness'" that talking about "competence" of language use is a
very prescriptive endeavor.

Bob Yates