Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: andre@shappski.demon.co.uk (Andre Shapps)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!newshost.marcam.com!uunet!in1.uu.net!pipex!bt!btnet!peernews.demon.co.uk!shappski.demon.co.uk!andre
Subject: Re: Children and languages
References: <208064050wnr@shappski.demon.co.uk> <D4oGwM.Iup@spss.com>
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Date: Tue, 28 Feb 1995 14:19:11 +0000
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In article: <D4oGwM.Iup@spss.com>  markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
> 
> In article <208064050wnr@shappski.demon.co.uk>,
> Andre Shapps <andre@shappski.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >I have been told by students of linguistics that it is generally 
> >accepted that for children learning their first language, no language 
> >is any easy or any harder than any other. I find this difficult to 
> >accept intuitively. Can anyone comment on this?
> 
> So far as I know, the statement is true-- for spoken language; it's not true
> for written languages.  Why do you find it hard to accept?
> 

I need to think more, but at the moment I find it hard to accept simply because I 
can't think of any reason why it should be the case, although by the same token I 
can't think of a strong reason why it shouldn't ...

Presumably there is no experimental way of testing for this, so the theory 
(hypothesis?) must have been arrived at theoretically, but no one has been able 
to show me how.
-- 
Andre Shapps

