tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 17 08:34:37 1994

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Re: <Hol wIja'chuq> was: Re:...

trI'Qalvo':

> > DujlIj yIlachHa'Qo' 'ej yIvuvtaH. Of course your instincts count. Instincts
> > have everything to do with how languages are used.
> 
> "Never unexaggerate your ship and continuaously trust it"?  Huh?

{Duj} is both "ship" and "instincts."

> Remember that a person's "instincts" about a language are based on 
> *their experience* with languages.

Now wait a minute.  If you are taking "instincts" to mean, unlearned, 
natural responses, then by definition they can't be based on 
experience.  If they were, they wouldn't be instincts, but acquired 
knowledge.

I believe pretty strongly in the theory of language that posits that 
humans are born with a considerable amount of linguistic knowledge, 
and that this knowledge must be the same for all humans, regardless of 
what linguistic community s/he is born in to.  In this sense, most of 
our knowledge and use of language, with the exception of vocabulary 
and a few "parameter settings," are "instinctive," in the sense that 
we're born with it.  I'm not going to bring a generative syntax lesson 
to this list, but I wanted to point out that instincts are not 
based on experience, especially when it comes to language.

--Holtej

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