Re: CHAT: Parallelism

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.