I Didn't Know I Knew That

[starshipcat]

In linguistics there's a concept called "native speaker intuitions" -- that sense of "rightness" we have about how sentences should be constructed in our native tongue. It's something that comes only during that initial period of brain plasticity in which we learn our first language, a plasticity which is no longer available for adult learners of

Comments

[lindahoyland]

Fascinating, I've had none native speaker friends who have asked me to check things although they speak excellent English as there are some nuances only a native speaker is aware of.

[starshipcat]

I remember having one of my TA's in college asking me about a particular construction, and my struggle to explain why it wasn't wrong, but it would feel odd in a cover letter. I think it was more an issue of register control, which isn't as big a thing as it is in some languages, but is still a very real thing. The turn of phrase was just a little too colloquial in a situation where a more elevated diction was called for.

[sartorias]

I don't think it ever goes away, though it does diminish. I hear bits of language from adults that has come from television--whole phrases that are repeated as one word or thought. I think our use of language evolves over a lifetime. As I struggle to master Chinese, I'm paying particular attention to these sorts of phrases, which is especially tough because of the maddening overlay of Chengyu that I think one probably has to grow up with.

[starshipcat]

One should always be careful about stating absolutes when discussing populations. There'll always be that one outlier that challenges the generalization.

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[starshipcat]

Wow!

[curiouswombat]

I remember learning that at some point in the past, and playing around with words in my head for the fun of it to basically confirm it - -like the Great Dragon example.

[starshipcat]

I think a lot of us Odds play around in our mind with linguistic rules, just to see how far they'll bend. Especially when we first discover the idea that some languages are really, really different in the way they encode things (like the aorist tense in Greek, or how Hebrew has perfective and imperfective aspects instead of past, present and future tenses). Not just a different word for the same thing, but completely different ways of going about saying things. And then being introduced to the idea of alien languages that do things that human language can't do.

[marycatelli]

"Green great dragon" was, of course, Tolkien's first encounter with this rule.

[starshipcat]

Trying to remember where that was mentioned. I've read so much by and about Tolkien that it starts jumbling together. (And there's one book on his conlang activities that the library has just acquired and I'd so much like to read, but the library is now closed For The Duration).

[marycatelli]

I believe it was when he wrote to Auden. His first story, he remembered nothing of except that his mother had told him that it was "great green dragon" and not "green great dragon."