Dave is right: we are talking past each other. Let me give an
illustration, and in the process hopefully clear one of your questions up.
"Knowledge of language" has nothing to do with what we self-conciously
"know" about our own language, or the grammar of any language, for that
matter. Rather, "knowledge of language" refers to the actual language
ability hard-wired, or innate, witthin the human mind. This refers not
only to the vast mental lexicon within a speaker's mind, but also to the
actual processes by which sentences are generated. It should be
self-evident (particularly when we ask first-year language students what a
"preposition" is) that speakers need not have any awareness of the
"grammar" of the language in order to use it. So, I completely reject
your assertion that knowledge of ["grammar," which is what you mean] leads
to language use. Instead, the innate knowledge of "language" (and
particularly one's own native language) leads to language use. Language
users can no more explain the actual mental processes that any human can
explain why he or she sees yellow on a daisy. That is to say, we can
observe the outward data and propose explanations, but they may or may not
have anything to do with the real nature of the mental processes behind
the actions/events.
Furthermore, by simple observation, Chomsky argues for a severe
distinction between the "language" that we all have in our mind, that
generates "grammatical" sentences and what often comes out of our mouth or
from our pen or keyboard, since the latter is often influenced by
performance issues (absent-mindedness, lack of sleep, drugs, nervousness,
etc.). The former is what he calls "competence," the latter
"performance." Furthermore, he asserts that performance is for the
psychologists or psycholinguists to study, but pure linguists only study
competence. By the way, here is where the current struggle in minimalism
is: how many pragmatics topics can we treat under competence, and are
phenomena like implicature always in the realm of performance/use (and
thus not to be subsumed under linguistics proper)?
Now, back to extraposition and )$R clauses: yes, I agree that there are
"reasons" that extraposition occurs. However, I carefully call these
"processing" issues in my dissertation to alert the reader that it is
unlikely that such reasons can really be identified within a linguistics
(proper) approach. They are better addressed within the realm of
psycholinguistics.
From dwashbur AT nyx.net Sun Oct 10 00:13:13 2004Return-Path: <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
Dear Dave,
> Even his own documents had to be
>written in Aramaic and Greek as well as Hebrew; if Hebrew was as common as
>some claim, the question then is, why?
HH: My first guess would be that there were three languages in use. A
good number of scholars say that.
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