Return-Path: <nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id h6KJM9709468; Sun, 20 Jul 2003 15:22:09 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 15:22:09 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <05D3ED1C.2DDA86D6.0AB94E44@aol.com> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: AndresMuro@aol.com To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-4EFF:2444] Re: Syntax X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 X-Mailer: Atlas Mailer 2.0 Status: O Content-Length: 4453 Lines: 61 In a message dated 7/20/2003 8:43:08 AM Eastern Standard Time, AWilder106 writes: > Andres. > > This is brief. > > Chomsky knows zip about speech and language evolution, he is a linguist and spends his time on grammar. Andrea: The Chomsky that I know of is one of the most prolific minds of our times. He is a linguist among many other things, and linguists do not just focus on grammar. However, syntax is part of grammar, and speech has a syntactic sense. Let me try to illustrate this. Supposse that you read, or hear the statement "While the dog runs, my mom cooks dinner" Later you report the statement to me. You may say: "while my mom cooks dinner, the dog runs" "the dog runs, while my mom cooks dinner" "while the dinner is being cooked by my mom, the dog runs" "mom cook dinner and dog run" "mom cooking dinner, while dog running" I could probably come up with ten different ways to say something that can be associated to the original sentence. However, if you are trying to convey the same meaning either verbally or in written form, you will follow syntactic (and semantic)rules. Oterhwise, you could would come up with: "cook dog run dinner mom while" "run while cook mom dinner dog" or "while dog cooks dinner my mom runs" "while gog cooks my mom, dinner runs" What prevents a person from producing the first two statements? One possibility is that a person learned all possilbe ways of constructing a sentence from experience, and there is never production of new structures". The other possibility is that the brain develops a syntax tha allows people to construct some sentences and not others. If the brain did not have this capacity it would be virtually impossible to acquire a language. If you had never heard the constrution " dinner is cooked by my mom while the dog runs", you would have no way of knowing that it meant the same thing as: "While the dog runs, my mom cooks dinner". The last two sentences can be recognized as syntactically correct, however are eliminated because they are semantically incorrect. Yet, the brain recognizes this difference. Andrea also writes: "I am interested in teaching adults (he isn't) and in what language is. So with some oher types of researchers I have come down to syntax." Andrea: In this case, it is important to know the above. If you did not believe that the above was true, then you would be force to teach your students every possible way of constructing a sentence that conveys the meaning "the dog runs while my mom cooks dinner". However, if you buy Chomsky's argument, you will know that by leanring syntactic rules a person will be able to recognize different utterances containing the same meaning. Andrea also writes: > Language/speech are interactive, developing through human interaction. The capacity for speech is innate, but if a person doesn't hear language by 7 years it won't develop. > > Piaget was interested in the development of "scientific" thinking, you know, holding one thing constant and manipulating the variables. Look at all his observations and experiments > and you will see this. Piaget did extensive research on development of cognitive faculties by observing his gradchildren while he played with them. I don't recall anything about Piaget using his grandchildren vs a controlled group to record his observations. Both Piaget and Chomsky aggreed that the brain has the ability to categorize things and give humans the ability to recognize things as belonging to the same category. IE: knowing that the sentence "the dog chases the ball" belongs to the same category as "the ball is being chased by the dog". Or, that if I see a german shepheard and, then I see as saint bernard, I will categorize them as dogs. The difference between the two is that Chomsky though that the ability of the brain to categorize was innate, and Piaget thought that the brain constructed the categories through experience. Chomsky, as you suggested believed, that for language acquisition, children needed to be exposed to language before age 7, for the linguistic ability of the brain to become properly activated (not sure if I said this right). As I mentioned earlier, it's been a while since I studied this. I am sure that among all the Harvard people there is someone that knows this better than I do and can come up with a more precise and modern explanation. Andres go here: www.geocities.com/andresmuro/art.html
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