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Subject:Re. Learning to speak/write From:Geoff Hart <geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> Date:Thu, 7 Dec 1995 16:23:46 LCL
I think the debate about this subject kind of misses the
point: there's no doubt that humans are born with a symbol
processing skill (words are just symbols) that lets us
identify and adopt "rules of grammar" while we're learning.
Whether you want to call that learning or not is splitting
hairs and missing the point. If we learn rules (grammatical
or otherwise) when we're young, we seem to learn them by
imitation, but as those of us who have studied language as
adults know, we don't stop learning as adults; the learning
process becomes more conscious, that's all.
Having grossly oversimplified an entire field of research,
I now withdraw to my corner to await rebuttals!
--Geoff Hart @8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Disclaimer: If I didn't commit it in print in one of our
reports, it don't represent FERIC's opinion.
