Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: USAGE: Language revival

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Wednesday, November 24, 1999, 22:56
Patrick Dunn wrote:
> > On Wed, 24 Nov 1999, John Cowan wrote: > > > Don Blaheta wrote: > > > > > That's not true at all. Once learned, we can remember these irregular > > > forms, but we still have to learn them in the first place. > > > > Exactly so. I was rejecting Ed's claim that we'd rather memorize > > than compute in all cases. Per contra, we memorize a modest number > > of irregular forms, but we compute the regular ones, just as you say. > > I'm not entirely convinced. I'm not certain that I compute adding a > dental to make the past tense in English -- I think I have just learned a > form of the verb separate from the present tense form and that form > happens to be the present tense form with an appropriate dental added to > it. After all, the rule for which dental to add is somewhat complicated > to the average joe: I suspect that most people wouldn't be able to tell > you why they add /t/ sometimes and /d/ other times, yet they do, and > flawlessly. They've memorized the form, not the formula.
-- "Old linguists never die - they just come to voiceless stops." - anonymous http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTailor