Quote

Native speakers of a language know intuitively whether a sentence is grammatical or not. They usually cannot specify exactly what is wrong, and very possibly they make the same mistakes in their own speech, but they know-unconsciously, not as a set of rules they learned in school-when a sentence is incorrect.

Peter Farb

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Peter Farb
Age: 50 †
Born: 1929
Born: January 1
Died: 1980
Died: January 1
Anthropologist
Author
Ecologist
Linguist
Naturalist
New York City
New York
Learned
Native
Grammatical
Mistake
Possibly
Specify
Wrong
Sentences
Intuitively
Whether
Mistakes
Incorrect
Language
Rules
Unconsciously
Cannot
Exactly
Grammar
School
Speech
Speakers
Make
Usually
Sentence

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An inability to communicate has little to do with international friction-as is seen in the special ferocity of wars fought between people who speak the same language.
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Speakers who have grown up in the American community unconsciously know its rules about taking turns in conversations-in the same way that they know the rules of grammar and the rules about appropriate speech in various situations.
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People who speak the same language can hate one another as easily as can people who speak unrelated languages.
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Despite the theories traditionally taught in high-school social studies, the truth is: the more primitive the society, the more leisured its way of life.
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Language does not stand still. Surprisingly, despite this knowledge, most speakers are fearful of change.
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Gestures and facial expressions do indeed communicate, as anyone can prove by turning off the sound on a television set and asking watchers to characterize the speakers from the picture alone.
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