Teacher Discussion Forums

What does it call what we often see in this forum, where abufletcher often takes his turn, and everybody else's as well? If you'd read the most cited article ever in Language, you'd know the answer: Self-selection (Rule 1b). And when no next-speaker selects at the end of this turn (i.e. if no one r...

For those interested in going beyond forum discussions, I would also strongly recommend the following: Atkinson, J. M. & Heritage, J. (Eds.). (1984). Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. This edited volume, though not directly related ...

Thinking and talking about stuff in an online forum is a fine thing and to be encouraged. But it would be pretty ridiculous if someone who was interested in, for example, the teaching of grammar or listening or process writing never actually read any of the literature in those fields and instead jus...

What your getting at here is the ACTION performed by the "first pair part" actually vs. its syntactic shape. A: Do you have the time? (Conventionalized request) B: It's 10:30. (Granting of the request) A: Do you have the time? B: Yes, I do. (Treats prior turn as question not request) Furthermore, by...

Let's try and work out why these sentences are so puke-worthy. What gives these examples their high vomitability-quotient is how completely representative they are of decades of Chomskyan(-esque) linguistic theorizing. It is, to my mind, simply ludicrous to treat something like "The window was brok...

Ugh!

Stephen Jones wrote:It seems to me he is setting up strawmen in his argument

I'd have to agree with this. Still, Educating Eve is an interesting read just for balance in a field that badly needs balance.

they are rarely wrong when they say something is correct. While intuition may be reasonably reliable for grammaticality judgements (and apparently also collocation issues) it is an extremely weak tool for investigation of discourse issues. Harvey Sacks, one of the founder of the field of conversati...

it is the culmulative weight of all these pieces that makes the blank slate idea laughable. I just see this as one of those continuums: (extreme of nuture) <--------------------> (extreme of nature) It's probably foolish to argue either extreme. Personally, I think the evidence points to something ...

Back during my "semantics period" I was quite impressed with the concept "verb valency" that has to do with the number and type of NPs that are "projected" by a specific verb. I think what appealed to me was the idea of a single word, in this case the verb, being the lynch-pin for an entire utteranc...

A Google search should show which is more frequently occurring.

I don't recall what Samspon wrote about this KE family, but I will take a look at it again soon. P. 90-96 Basically Sampson argues that both Gopnik (the original researcher) and Pinker overstate their case -- which seems to be very common to formalist linguistics. That is, very LARGE claims are mad...

I don't put much weight on a few historical accounts of "feral children." I would imagine that the fact that these children lived in conditions of extreme social isolation is a relevant as the simple lack of language input.

cftranslate wrote:
-------> Am I in too deep? <---------

"Excuse me, am I speaking above your intellectual level, baby?"

I have to admit that I sense a bit of "the crank" in Sampson as well -- but I do think his book points out the dangers of accepting sight-unseen archival literature. As far as whether the "nativist" position has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, I think that depends on how one defines this pos...