Question, question or two...

[conuly]

Okay, because I'm a broken record. Two things seem to be a common (and pollable) theme in the recent angsty discussion.

1. "If language changes, eventually we'll have lots of incomprehensible languages instead of just one"
2. "Double negatives are confusing, because two negatives can make a positive".

Now, the first one is pretty much true. Look what happened to Latin, or to Chinese (now Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.) However, the question isn't "is this true" but "do we care?". After all, in other places people *expect* to be multi-lingual, to know five or six languages. And we could always go the IAL route, have one auxlang that's not anybody's native language and let the rest of it all go its way.

The second one, I just don't believe. I don't think *anybody* has ever actually gotten confused when hearing a double negative. I know for a fact that it used to be an accepted part of the English language (which, yes, means that the educated classes said it) and that it's a required part of many other languages now. Edit: That's not true. I can certainly believe that *some* people have. However, I don't believe that any native speaker with normal language development has, and I'm fairly certain that most non-native speakers haven't, unless they had a well-meaning (but ill-informed) language instructer tell them that "In English two negatives are a positive", when the reality is "In English, two negatives are a negative, but this usage is considered to be uneducated".

So, poll!

[Poll #409457]

You all know my view by now, so it was hard for me to keep my bias out of this poll. My apologies.

Edit: Wow. I'm honestly surprised. I didn't expect *anybody* would pick "yes, recently, native speaker". Okay, I'm not too surprised with Moggy, because she's not typical I think, but the other (can't spell name gah)? I wasn't expecting that. I still think that my case still stands, most people are never gonna get confused by this usage after childhood. Keep voting, of course. I'm just chattering.

Comments

[conuly]

Well, yes. Children who are never exposed to language can't pick it up, that's obvious. However, unless these kids have parents who aren't talking to them, at all, and are, of course, typically developing, I don't see why they wouldn't learn the rules of their native grammar like any other child. At the age I'm talking about, most kids don't know how to read, they don't have homework. And kids in cultures without literature don't not learn grammar because of it.

It's just important not to confuse a nonstandard grammar with no grammar, or no rules.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

I don't mean they aren't spoken to at all, just that they don't get much (trust me, my mother has taught at this school for 15 years now, she's had her fair share of normally able kids coming from a disadvantaged background.) And I'm not talking about the nonstandard vs no grammar thing here, just curious about where you think children from such backgrounds are going to learn it if other children learn it at home and therefore it doesn't need teaching in schools.

I don't think Mum's 4-5 year olds have homework, no, although they might well have reading books they take home with them. Certainly 5-7 year olds have books to take home. In England schools begin teaching reading at 4 (I know this because I could read before I went to school, then I went to school and was un-taught *grins*)