Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 07:49:17 -0700 From: "Gerald M. Swatez" <swatez-AT-earthlink.net> Subject: Re: No. 18 At 4:49 PM -0400 6/7/02, responding to hugh, mnunes-AT-gpc.edu wrote: > > Children learn to speak without knowing syntax as such. > >Hmm... you better tell my two year old! > >It's actually quite amazing how rule-driven language is. Child speech is >anything but random. When my granddaughter Melissa was about two, she would babble on and on interminably. Watching her, and hearing her just below the level of intelligibility, one could think that she was conversing coherently in English. In fact, I was able to engage in long conversations with her that were completely vacuous semantically, but which *sounded* as though they were syntactically correct. I could keep (it) up with her better when I did use nonsense *words*. Apparently --this is my unsystematic judgement-- she learned the "syntactical rhythm" of English speech long before she mastered either the meaning or the specific sounds of words. (However, we must distinguish between "driven by rules" and "describable by rules"!) The same thing occurred with her brother. However, he articulated specific words and their meanings at an earlier age than did Melissa, so the phenomenon was less dramatic with him. Watching other youngsters since then, and recalling my own children, I've come to believe that children do learn syntax, or the rhythm of phrasing, much earlier than they learn semantics. Sounds, rhythm, body movements --all seem capable of being imitated without the cognitive complexity required by the *semantics* of signification. I think body language is easier to learn than discursive language, and much earlier in life. I think much social meaning (the pragmatics of language use --Pierce) is packed into rhythm, gesture --the dance of talking. I'm kinda stuck on distinguishing discourse from these other things. (And I recognize the possibility that the *marking* of a phrase or set of phrases as within one genre or another might well be done non-discursively, e.g., by body language, or by choice of occasion, or by diction/enunciation.) And I wonder whether my mind may not be stuck in the logos, the family of cognitive phrases; on the other hand, the goddess, who speaks ontology, poesis, revelation, is irrefutable (Gorgias); isn't her phrasing always marked by some non-discursive sign: the aromatic smoke of a psychotropic herb, a stage and thick-soled boots, a cross on the wall, or a flag on the podium? Jerry
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