Because you're a linguist and speak for linguistics now, right?

I don't think so, Putin. I think the divide mirrors that between universalism and relativism (in any sense), and I also don't think that divide is unbridgeable. Everyone has their own unique perspective, and yet they are all perspectives of the same scene. A word means something different to each person who heard it, yet it is only one word. We can still communicate, though the communication suffers from this apparently fatal handicap, we carry on communicating here anyway.

Can we do an experiment where Invictus and Obiwan go through a single thread without appealing to either A) authority or B) popularity?

Lol.

Oracles are bullshitters.

? What does that mean?

"Because you're a linguist and speak for linguistics now, right?"

One of my degrees is political science, the other is German. So I had to suffer through a lot of linguistics classes. I'm no expert at all, but I recognize how you know nothing about what you're talking about.

I didn't major in linguistics, but I've taught foreign language as well as basic English to kids with developmental disabilities. The idea that you can simultaneously teach a language but that there is no prescription for how to speak is illogical and contradictory, not to mention pedagogically unhelpful.

"Oracles are bullshitters" means that their revelations are just noise.

And linguists have been singularly useless when it comes to speech therapy (see: the devastation that occurred thanks to Chomsky), so I can't say I have much trust in what they say.

Putin it might help to the think of the grammar rules as constantly trying to catch up to the facts on the ground: usually pretty close, and thus useful, but always behind the actual times.

A few years ago I would have agreed. And still do in the practical sense that we should teach children the Proper Way To Speak and encourage that over any patois they may speak at home. But, in the academic sphere, the descriptivist argument is extremely persuasive. More or less universally on a lot of the questions it deals with, if I remember correctly.

"And linguists have been singularly useless when it comes to speech therapy (see: the devastation that occurred thanks to Chomsky), so I can't say I have much trust in what they say."

Linguists not coming up with a good speech therapy program does nothing to undermine their work in, say, reconstructing Proto-Indo-European. C'mon, man. You're just being silly.

It speaks to their credibility of what language is if their work is totally useless for helping people acquire it. It's also really strange considering they are the ones claiming language is entirely socially determined. You'd think they'd have a better idea of how language acquisition works on a cognitive and physiological level.

Where are these claims coming from? You're building a strawman.

Again, this speech therapy thing (which I'm wholly ignorant of) does not just negate the very broad field of linguistics. That's a monumentally stupid thing to say. It's like saying engineers have no credibility because sometimes roofs leak.

Aren’t what a language is, and how it is acquired by a new speaker, two different things? Why would there be a correspondance between how a language itself evolves and how a new speaker comes to learn it? The learner doesn’t recapitulate the history of the language in order to become fluent in it.

I'm not going to submit to your obligatory appeal to authority game simply because you invoke the very flawed field of linguistics. I don't believe they have a monopoly of insight on what language is, nor do I take your word for it that there is anything close to a consensus on this point.

Language acquisition isn't something you can dismiss glibly especially when it comes to determining what language is. If they are the all-knowing authorities on language this is a big problem.

This isn't a strawman, this is based on experience dealing with speech therapy and listening to speech therapists talk about how the Chomskian "revolution" set speech therapy back decades, and how no workable model for speech therapy has been developed by the Chomskians.

OK fine. So speech therapy was wrong. But how, exactly, does that make you throw all of linguistics to the flames?

Oh, I see. Because this is an opinion you hold. So it must be right. Gotcha.

"Aren’t what a language is, and how it is acquired by a new speaker, two different things?"

No. Not at all. The entire point of the descriptivists is that language is entirely socially determined. If so then language education should be thrown out the window, since the only proper way to learn language is by immersion, and the vulgar and the popular is the ultimate authority on what is correct.

"Oh, I see. Because this is an opinion you hold. So it must be right. Gotcha."

No, you want everybody to bow down to linguistics as the final authority on everything language (as a cheap debate trick), I raised a problem with doing that. It's not dismissing every single thing linguistics has done, but I'm not going to accede that linguistics has got everything right either.

I don't want that and didn't say that.

And no one would say "linguistics has got everything right." That doesn't even make sense. That's like saying "science has got everything right" or "politics has got everything right." It's nonsensical.

You cannot invoke a consensus within the discipline of linguistics and then claim speaking about linguistics in the collective sense is a logical impossibility.

"the only proper way to learn language is by immersion"

That sounds idiotic. Whether or not language is socially determined, it's still a thing, even if it's a moving target. Helps to have someone point you to the target.

I thought Chomsky was all about "universal grammar" though, pre-wired and ready to have it's (socially determined?) parameters set. Why are they trying to skip the part where the parameters are set?

Why does it help? If all the kiddos are saying "ain't" and "he be" and "I is". Then what's the point of teaching grammar rules? Just do as the kiddos do.

" thought Chomsky was all about "universal grammar" though, pre-wired and ready to have it's (socially determined?) parameters set. Why are they trying to skip the part where the parameters are set?"

I don't understand the question. The notion of universal pre-wired grammar is itself the problem, the obstacle to language learning. If language learning is an "instinct" then what help is that for people don't seem to have that "instinct"?

To rephrase the question: Why would having an inborn capacity to learn grammar lead someone to conclude that there was no need to actually teach the specific grammar for a particular language? Universal grammar notwithstanding, the specifics of how a particular language works still need to be conveyed somehow. It seems dumb to assume "immersion" is the only way.

I had never heard of all of linguistics universally accepting descriptivism until Invictus claimed this was the case. So I agree it doesn't make much sense.

Although if language is instinct then wouldn't the kiddos just pick it up without instruction?

Instinct seems opposite of learned.

I don't see how instinct is the opposite of learned at all. Allow me to introduce a *metaphor*, your instinctual capacity for language as a *machine*. Language instruction sets the dials on the machine so that it interoperates properly with the other machines around it.

If the parameters are not set properly, that interoperability suffers. Since interoperability is the whole point, the machinery is useless as such, though it still exists.

I agree that immersion is nonsense, but it's a big leap from there to say that language is therefore a totally learned, non-instinctual ability.

Completely instinctual is too chaotic and we don't all have the same instincts.
Non-instinctual speaking takes long because you have to think about everything.
Anyone disagrees with either of those statements?