Inferior dialects?

Julielai wrote:

I don't understand why so many academic papers are written over something that is basically common sense.

You have missed the whole point of the social sciences.

As you shall please... All I have made thus far can be summarized as:

1. there can be no clear distinction between a 'language' and a 'dialect', save approaches based on the vague idea of 'spectrum' and 'linguistic region'.

2. there can not be an absolute definition of a 'standard language' vis a vis 'language variations', although there must be a vague idea as such in L2 learning.

3. 'prescriptivism', defined as an explicit manner in which a person generalizes rules, is not necessary in L1 acquisition, on the grounds that it does not fulfill the take - up requirement, whereas it is virtually a spontaneous action amongst L2 learners.

That you suggest we attend Chomsky's next lecture to see if he is egocentric bewilders me as much as that there are so many papers discussing something that is bascially 'common sense' bewilders you. It depends on whether you have an end to your endeavours: even if Chomsky is 'egocentric', as most academics are, does that mean we shall discard his theories for good? I think the facts will tell: he is one of the most frequently quoted scholar known to the modern world. His theories are most influential in the fields of mathematics, psychology, computer science, and philosophy. At any rate, this appears to me an approval of his 'egocentric' manner.

I think your question you can well answer yourself: I was discussing the loopholes of the traditional approaches as to the study of language, coming slightly across the word Chomsky, which I presume is rather trivial relative to the topic I was discussing. Then voila, a chap asks me to give the name of the book from which I quote, and then comes the comment that Chomsky is an egocentric egg - head, where I can see no relationship between the allegation that he is such an egg - head and whether my point shall stand. This may be analogous to the 'common sense nonsense papers' you thought of.

This is not the case in examining whether 'Non - native speakers need more explicit rules / guidelines that native speakers'. This is a hypothesis from which linguists derive methods: If this is true, then... (maybe a higher degree of prescriptivism in L2 teaching); if this is not true, then... (maybe making L2 teaching more akin to L1 teaching). Therefore it is a must that the hypothesis be put to scrutiny. By the same token, if 'Chomsky is egocentric' is a hypothesis from which a theory (perhaps 'the theory of egocentric linguists'!) is derived, I believe there will definitely be a bunch of scholars writing such 'nonsense papers'.

This is true of any scientific and philosophical studies, as they hold the belief that intuition (what is called 'common sense') is not always correct. eg. 1. the earth was once thought of as a cube, cloaked with a dome - shaped sky 2. a crime was (and somehow still is) thought of as something immoral, which is not always the case (Smith and Hogan, <Criminal Law>, 1992ed., p.16 - 17) 3. Bertrand Russell's examination into 'how the logical function works' in the Epimenides' fallacy ('All Cretans are liars'. If this primary premise is true, whereas the secondary premise 'I am a Cretan' is also true, then am I telling a lie?) works.

BTW, even if there's a point in looking into whether Chomsky is egocentric, I think to attend his lectures will be unnecessary. I have a 6 - hour .avi file showing him lecturing. Online transcripts of his debate with politicians and other linguists are also available at www.chomsky.org (If I remember aright).

'But don't dictionaries serve as a prescriptive tool according to this--to explicitly state the general usage ("rules")?'

As I said earlier, what a native speaker looks more on is the meaning (which, if broadly defined, can be regarded as a 'rule'. After all, language as a whole can be defined as a 'social institution'.) instead of the structural rules which constitute the language, as it is something 'inside'. This reminds me of my exam paper yesterday, asking me to define the distinction between 'primary grammar' and 'secondary grammar'. Neither is, in my view, a sine qua non for the other, provided that, for 'secondary grammar' (a set of rules generalized by linguists), there's a means to acquire the knowledge without the use of language: you can well use Cantonese Chinese without explicitly generalizing rules: is that an 'SVO' language? Does the complement come before or after the thing it complements? All these appear to a native speaker without training in grammar something really queer, I mean, even redundant. However, L2 learning sees learners constantly generalize rules. I would like here to draw your attention to some 'live' examples.

1. [link]

2. [link] (the 8th post)

3. [link]

4. [link]

All this suggests to me that L2 English speakers tend to generalize rules, as though they having a lesson jot down some notes. Dictionaries therefore, apart from serving as a thesarus, become a 'grammar' (the so - called secondary grammar I mean) book as well. That the 2 kinds of language users use the dictionary does not mean they are looking for the same thing. To take an analogy, both a young lad and his old man will probably read newspaper, but whereas the lad may look for the sports column, his daddy may probably look for some porns (-___-' but that's true), or the jobs column.

Why should the explicit/implicit nature of the process define whether the approach is prescriptivistic?  The goal is the same either way--to conform to a prescribed norm.

It is somehow a refuge for the term prescriptivism to take, and hence at least some useful theories can be derived: If the distinction between the explicit and implicit manner whereby an individual formulates rules not be taken to define 'prescriptivism', then, since there exists virtually no occasion where the human cognitive system acquires a knowledge (or to be more precise, 'learn / acquire a language') without establishing rules of some sort, the statement becomes a tautology. eg. a black horse is black, in which there can be no exceptions.

ie. 'If formulating rules equals prescriptivism, and since the human cognitive system by nature acquires knowledge by establishing rules, then a human is by its nature prescriptive'.

In this case the term is an include - all word, which has virtually no meaning, and resembles 'All human beings have a physiological brain.'

PS: I will not have access to the Internet hereafter till... some 3 or 4 days I think, as I will be kicked out of my home during the intervening time.