--- Casey Rousseau <casey at the-bat.net> wrote: > Mark A. Mandel <thnidu at yahoo.com> wrote: > > --- David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b at dd-b.net> wrote: > > > > > The fact that I dealt with German as a language learned as an > > > adolescent, not as a child, may be warping my view here. But > > > it seems to me that everything about grammar they taught us > > > in English there was some German equivalent, and then there > > > was about three times that much *additional* stuff that > > > applied only to German, not to English. > > > > But that doesn't count the sh*tloads that you never had to > > learn as a native speaker of English because native speakers > > don't get it wrong, but that L2 learners have to learn by > > study. For example: > > > > Give the big blue book to Jane. -- fine > > Give it to Jane. -- fine > > Give Jane the big blue book. -- fine > > Give Jane it. -- WRONG!!! > > Hmm. Does it boil down to comparing whether it is harder to learn the > case > endings that make word order less important in a language like German > than > it is to learn the rules of word order in a language like English? As Mark said, there's a lot more than that. For instance, you might try explaining to a foreigner how to use "say", "tell", "talk", and "speak". For more examples of English grammar we all take for granted, see <http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue>. A good one to start with might be <http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/npi.html>, about what triggers words such as "any" and (in American English) "budge". I haven't mastered it, but it shows how complicated things are. Jerry Friedman __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 250MB free storage. Do more. Manage less. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250