Re: that

On Wed, 15 Aug 2007, Farhad wrote:

The concept "native speaker" is an absract construct. What you mean by
that could be very different from what I mean by it. That's why I
asked in earlier postings that the term should be operationalized
before discussing it. But some people, regrettably, interpreted it as
too much confidence and arrogance on my part to "include" myself in
the definition.

I, personally, view the concept "native speaker" apart from socio-
enviromental aspects. I think if anyone has a competence quite similar
to that of Chomsky's "an ideal native speaker" should be regarded as a
native speaker.

No. A "native speaker" is someone who has picked up the language as their
first language when learning to speak as a child. No-one else is a native
speaker. That is the only sensible use of the term. Learning a language
through being formally taught it is a different thing from picking it up
as the first tongue. However perfect the formally learnt language may be,
it is not processed as the mother tongue - sometimes an aspect of that is
that it is "too perfect".

There is scienttific evidence that there is part of the brain which picks up
language but which only operates when we are children. That is why any adult
learner of a language, however competent they may be, cannot be counted as
a "native speaker" - the langauge will always be to some extent artificial
to them. To some extent, being consciously aware of language, and learning
grammar formally switches us off from being "native speakers" of it. I
would say the true native speaker is someone who doesn't know anything
about grammar, phonetics etc, so speaks the language entriely naturally as
it comes.

Matthew Huntbach
.

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