This is a response I wrote for a language teacher group on FaceBook, in response to a question regarding linguistic knowledge versus general knowledge:
VanPatten has said on his show that he sees language to be made from a universal grammar and a general learning architecture. That general learning architecture is not referring to the explicit memorization of rules that we need for learning physics, history, etc. It's largely the associative processes that cognitive scientists study, whereby exposure to many things (e.g. Birds, furniture, plants) develop categories in our minds simply through exposure many times, and through the similarity and frequency of features (wings, legs, eyes, color) across the many examples we see in our experience. If I ask any person "can a bird have six legs", they won't use any memorized rules, nor will they need any strenuous thinking to answer. It is unlikely anyone ever told them how many legs a bird is supposed to have. But it's just as easy to judge as it is to judge an ungrammatical sentence. This is the area that researchers in Cognitive Grammar and Usage-based Linguistics explore, which VanPatten mentions on his show.
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Reed Riggs (Author)I hold a Ph.D. from the University of Hawai‘i. My research looks at entrenchment, frequency effects, and salience along with interactional behaviors from Usage-based Linguistics (UBL) and Conversation Analytic (CA) perspectives. Archives
June 2023
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