Re: Subject / Object / ?

Quoting John Cowan <cowan@...>:

> Andreas Johansson scripsit:
>
> > > >* This is not a rhetorical question. I am genuinely curious as to why
> you
> > > >apparently see a need for primary schools to teach kids how to analyze
> > > >sentences in their native language.
> > >
> > > Because that's the only way to make them able to reliably and
> consistently
> > > build and understand complex sentences in their own language.  [...]
> >
> > I must say this much surprises me. Particularly since I know plenty of
> people
> > who could not grammatically dissect the simplest sentence (altho they
> likely
> > could for a while during their school years), yet can read and write texts
> of
> > highish complexity perfectly well.
> >
> > It also seems a priori unexpected - why would not one's subconscious grasp
> of
> > one's native grammar suffice, when it clearly does for speaking? At least I
> > "say" what I'm going to write in my head as I type it, which makes it hard
> for
> > me to believe the mental processes involved in the production of written
> and
> > spoken texts are _that_ different.
>
> Remember that you are talking to a francophone, for whom this procedure is
> essentially impossible due to the wide separation of spoken French and
> written
> French, which Christophe has himself characterized as "two separate
> languages"
> on many occasions.
The thought occured to me, but Christophe's comments very much sounded like he
believed them to be valid for all languages, and his comments about Dutch
appeared to settle the matter.

                                                                Andreas

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