Re: CHAT: Parallelism

I have no idea what you are objecting to in my statement.  If you have
any argument with me, could you be a little clearer as to what it is?

Ed Heil ------ edheil@postmark.net
--- http://purl.org/net/edheil ---

Charles wrote:

> Ed Heil wrote:
>
> > storage is *always* preferable to computation.  This is a general
> > cognitive principle (though contradictory to the explicit assumptions
> > of much mainstream linguistics in the latter half of this century) and
> > it is reasonable to accept that it is true in language
>
> How many new words of vocabulary can we learn per day?
> (Firstly, as children; secondly, as adults.)
> Compare that to the size of any natlang vocabulary,
> multiplied by exceptions and connotations.
>
> Each word has to be integrated, in its meaning, sound, usage,
> with everything we already know. This burns many neurons.
> I have read most of the Teach Yourself books (I hope!)
> but my Tamil vocab is not all it should be. One nice thing
> about AUXLANG is hearing the language teachers discuss
> the difference between nice theory and dirty practice.
>
> Your assertion is true in the sense that one cannot perform,
> e.g. one's golf swing, by conscious step-by-step thinking
> in real-time; but that is how most non-trivial learning
> and adjustment happen. Memory is not static (as per Bartlett);
> we are constantly rebuilding the indexes to the database.