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Interesting: "We asked all the children if a certain illogical sentence was grammatically correct: “Apples grow on noses.” The monolingual children couldn’t an

by Jun8 15y ago

Interesting: "We asked all the children if a certain illogical sentence was grammatically correct: “Apples grow on noses.” The monolingual children couldn’t answer. They’d say, “That’s silly” and they’d stall. But the bilingual children would say, in their own words, “It’s silly, but it’s grammatically correct.” The bilinguals, we found, manifested a cognitive system with the ability to attend to important information and ignore the less important."

ignifero 15y ago
One of the peculiar things about language acquisition is that children learn it much better than one would expect. It's the "Poverty of the stimulus" paradox that led Chomsky to assert innate capacity to process grammar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_of_the_stimulus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_of_the_stimulus
wccrawford 15y ago
Especially since I don't think we were taught grammar until we were 8-10, where I'm from. At that age, I couldn't have possibly answered that question because I wouldn't know what grammar is. I suspect that they didn't use the word grammar, but somehow got around it, asking if the sentence was correctly formed or something. Of course, it's also possible that having parents teach you 2 languages practically forces them to teach about grammar early on, so they had an unfair advantage.
- ma2rten 15y ago
  Generally parents don't teach their children about grammar when they bring them up bilingually. One parent just talks in one language to the child and the other parent in the other language. At least that was the case for me. But I can very well image, that you gain a better understanding of grammar, when you speak two languages, almost by definition. This trick is also used in Natural Language Processing to improve part-of-speech tagging.
algorias 15y ago
I can attest to that. When I was 9, we moved to another country and I had to learn Spanish from scratch. A year or so later, I still couldn't speak without an accent and still had a small vocabulary, but I vastly outperformed most of my classmates in orthography and grammar.
T-R 15y ago
One thing I've noticed as I've learned other languages is that I've become very keenly aware of, for example, all of the different definitions/parts of speech of the word "that" (each translates differently and takes different parts of speech as its object), and consequently how I structure my sentences. Of course, part of that could also be a result of my tendency to think about grammatical correctness in terms of type systems.
- ma2rten 15y ago
  Funny, because English is not my native language, but I would have no idea what the different meanings of 'that' would be.
  - patio11 15y ago
    There are at least a dozen common constructions which use that. Indicative that: "Which apple do you want?" "That apple." "This apple?" "No, that apple." Causative that: "Why did you go to school?" "So that I could study Japanese." Antecedent that, where that takes the place of some concept which has come before: "Did you study Japanese?" "That is a given." "Never going to see it outside of literary constructions" that: "That which cannot be seen is more real than that which cannot be felt." Adjectival-clause-introducing that: "We are looking for two students that are studying language pedagogy." etc, etc English grammar, fun stuff.
    - Jun8 15y ago
      While looking at the Wikipedia entry for definite article, I found that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_%28grammar%29#Definite_articles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_%28grammar%29#Definite_...) that was derived from þæt, the neuter singular form of the in Middle English. Fascinating stuff!
    - riffraff 15y ago
      pardon this non-native, but shouldn't "We are looking for two students that are studying language pedagogy." be "We are looking for two students _who_ are studying language pedagogy." or possibly _which_ ? Or are they equivalent?
ignifero 15y ago
I suspect it's because you don't really learn what grammar or syntax is until you have to (i.e. until you learn a second language). For the same reason, you don't know what is "incorrect syntax", since people rarely make syntactical errors after childhood.

by Jun8 15y ago

ignifero 15y ago

One of the peculiar things about language acquisition is that children learn it much better than one would expect. It's the "Poverty of the stimulus" paradox that led Chomsky to assert innate capacity to process grammar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_of_the_stimulus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_of_the_stimulus

wccrawford 15y ago

Especially since I don't think we were taught grammar until we were 8-10, where I'm from. At that age, I couldn't have possibly answered that question because I wouldn't know what grammar is. I suspect that they didn't use the word grammar, but somehow got around it, asking if the sentence was correctly formed or something. Of course, it's also possible that having parents teach you 2 languages practically forces them to teach about grammar early on, so they had an unfair advantage.

ma2rten 15y ago
Generally parents don't teach their children about grammar when they bring them up bilingually. One parent just talks in one language to the child and the other parent in the other language. At least that was the case for me. But I can very well image, that you gain a better understanding of grammar, when you speak two languages, almost by definition. This trick is also used in Natural Language Processing to improve part-of-speech tagging.

algorias 15y ago

I can attest to that. When I was 9, we moved to another country and I had to learn Spanish from scratch. A year or so later, I still couldn't speak without an accent and still had a small vocabulary, but I vastly outperformed most of my classmates in orthography and grammar.

T-R 15y ago

One thing I've noticed as I've learned other languages is that I've become very keenly aware of, for example, all of the different definitions/parts of speech of the word "that" (each translates differently and takes different parts of speech as its object), and consequently how I structure my sentences. Of course, part of that could also be a result of my tendency to think about grammatical correctness in terms of type systems.

ma2rten 15y ago
Funny, because English is not my native language, but I would have no idea what the different meanings of 'that' would be.
- patio11 15y ago
  There are at least a dozen common constructions which use that. Indicative that: "Which apple do you want?" "That apple." "This apple?" "No, that apple." Causative that: "Why did you go to school?" "So that I could study Japanese." Antecedent that, where that takes the place of some concept which has come before: "Did you study Japanese?" "That is a given." "Never going to see it outside of literary constructions" that: "That which cannot be seen is more real than that which cannot be felt." Adjectival-clause-introducing that: "We are looking for two students that are studying language pedagogy." etc, etc English grammar, fun stuff.
  - Jun8 15y ago
    While looking at the Wikipedia entry for definite article, I found that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_%28grammar%29#Definite_articles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_%28grammar%29#Definite_...) that was derived from þæt, the neuter singular form of the in Middle English. Fascinating stuff!
  - riffraff 15y ago
    pardon this non-native, but shouldn't "We are looking for two students that are studying language pedagogy." be "We are looking for two students _who_ are studying language pedagogy." or possibly _which_ ? Or are they equivalent?

ignifero 15y ago

I suspect it's because you don't really learn what grammar or syntax is until you have to (i.e. until you learn a second language). For the same reason, you don't know what is "incorrect syntax", since people rarely make syntactical errors after childhood.