Re: Ron Garret considered harmful

On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:45:55 +0000, Kaz Kylheku wrote:

On 2009-11-09, Tamas K Papp <tkpapp@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:59:12 -0500, Raffael Cavallaro wrote:

are all examples of this common mistake (yes, Tamas, it is possible
for native speakers to make mistakes in grammar)

People sometimes misspeak (ie make unconscious mistakes), but I think
that the current consensus among linguists is that every healthy adult
(ie not suffering from aphasia, etc) speaks his or her native language
perfectly.

Of course. We simply define those who don't speak their native language
pefectly as being not healthy or having aphasia.

In related news, computer scientists believe that every healthy program
(i.e. not suffering from defects) is bug-free and works perfectly.

I think that you misunderstand (or maybe I am not very good at
explaining what I understand about linguistics, which is admittedly
very little).

My impression is that the healthy adults in the statement above would
be those who have the mental capacity to generate the grammars of
natural languages they know. When they can't, the conditions are very
drastic, and they can be diagnosed by a neurologist: there is no
smooth transition.

People who speak non-standard variants of a language don't do so
because they are mentally incapable of speaking the standard dialect,
but because of the environment they grew up in (and acquired the
language). The implicit assumption is that if you raised the same
person in an upper-middle class home with educated native speakers as
parents, they would speak the standard dialect.

Anyhow, this is highly off-topic, and I am not an expert in
linguistics, I just like to read books about it. So if you are
interested, I would suggest that you take this discussion to another
ng: you are much likely to get information from people who actually know
the subject in depth, rather than an interested amateur.

Cheers,

Tamas




.

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