Dr Winford James
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The child's initial linguistic state, 111

March 23, 2003
by Dr Winford James


So English-acquiring children, as we saw last Sunday, somehow know that the pronoun 'He'and name-noun 'Manning' in a sentence such as 'He said that Manning was happy' are not one and the same person; that is, that they do not co-refer. They know because they have the knowledge of non-coference naturally in their brains in the form of UG, Universal Grammar. I do not teach them it nor does my friend Mrs. Undine Giuseppi, UG!

But it is not only English-acquiring children that do, but all language-acquiring children. Which means that Creole-acquiring children do as well.

The Creole-speaking child would render the example sentence above as 'He say Manning di(d) happy', and, like the English child, she would know that the 'He' refers to a person other than Manning. How would she know this, especially as nobody could have possibly taught her how to make the distinction?

She would also know that the pronoun and name-noun underlined in each of the following sentences can refer to the same person:

1. Manning say he did happy.
2. When he talking to he wife, Manning happy.
3. The people whe did see him talking with he wife say Manning did happy.
4. He wife say Manning did happy.

As explained in the last column, she would know because the UG she and all other children are born with makes her know. In short order, she applies her UG to sentences she hears around her and is able to (unconsciously) interpret when the pronoun refers to a name-noun and when it doesn't. When it doesn't, there is non-coreference.

Hardly any parent, or teacher of English or Creole, consciously - I repeat, consciously - has this knowledge of the structure of Creole (or any other language!) and therefore cannot teach it. In fact, nobody that I know teaches children how to speak the Creole they are picking up from around them!

If children are not taught that non-co-reference is part of the structure of their community language and still interpret the reference of pronouns and name-nouns accurately, then we must hypothesize that they are born with an ability to do so unconsciously.

The hypothesis has important implications, one of which is that there may be other structures of their community language that children have and know naturally. One of the tasks that some acquisition linguists have set themselves is to find out what those structures are from language to language and to formulate a list of the common (abstract) structures uniting all languages. Finding these structures will help us explain better than we can at this stage of our knowledge how and why children so easily and uniformly acquire language they are socially exposed to.

Another task - a far easier one - is to identify what errors children make as they set about acquiring their community language and to analyse the common characteristics from language community to language community.

Which raises an interesting question about the many 'problems' students have learning the international dialact of English called Standard English. Do they ever have problems with the acquisition of abstract structures like the ones relating to coreference and non-coreference, or is it that they have problems with surface grammatical structures like those relating to pluralizing nouns, agreeing verbs with subjects, and distinguishing between 'will' and 'would'?

It seems to me that their problems are more of the latter kind, and even these can be quickly overcome with the relevant depth of exposure to spoken Standard English. Of course, the trick is how to expose them in a context where Creole is sufficient in many ways and social situations, and where motivation to acquire Standard English is extremely hard to inspire.

But we can be sure that they can acquire any language proficiently, Standard English included, if they have the right exposure and the right kind of motivation. Giving them these two conditions is the essence of English teaching. Of course, teachers have to know how Standard English works - both consciously and unconsciously.


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