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From:
Joe Martin Date: Sat Jul 1, 2000 5:29 am Subject: native speakers | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Stefan asks: > Is there anybody on the list who has got an idea whether I would do very > much wrong if I would show confidence in what little Irina and her > friends > are going to develop - I mean the structure of SL? If I were you I would have great big buckets of confidence in her. Nowadays it's pretty much a fundamental concept of linguistics that "native speakers are never wrong." This means that languages are formed and maintained by the people who use them, that those who learn the language from birth as a first language have complete mastery of them, and everyone else has to accept their judgements as to what is acceptable or not. (the linguists argue about whether that mastery is biological or whatever, but everyone accepts that it is there.) Another well established idea is that by the age of 5, unless there is interfernece with normal input, a child has already mastered all the major points of their language and to repeat what you already know, "native speakers" in the case of signing, are the deaf children of signing parents. Isn't Irina one of those? and isn't she 5? and can't she sign? You've got an expert right there. Noam Chomsky would be asking her for judgements on grammaticallity. In message 3689, you asked: > "What is little Irina doing if she doesn't follow the rules? Well, according to current linguistic theory, she is a native speaker, she doesn't *follow the rules, she *makes the rules. None of all that really matters as far as Signwriting, of course. Just write down what everyone signs. If some of us ain't no good talkers, we be just a dialect, y'unnerstand. _______________________________________ Joe Martin, Plain Old Ordinary Student Top Left Corner USA :-)))) PS; why do you keep calling me Martin? I'm Joe; martin is my *last name. LOL ;-))) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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