emphatic expressions [to Larsen and Philip Graber], "basic word order"

Mark Beatty marksresearch at hawaii.rr.com
Thu Jan 25 13:51:31 EST 2001


Joseph said,

Perhaps the question is best asked with pedagogy in mind.  When Philo
was in first grade [sic], how was he taught sentence structure, and
what evidence have we to this?  Little Philo must have been taught
elementary syntactical building blocks first.  It would seem obvious
that the first block was the verb, and then syntactical feet are
introduced that interact with the verb in various ways.  Then again,
the stage (1st grade, 6th grade, or 10th grade) at which writing is
introduced greatly changes the pedagogy.

Second, the "uneconomical" label is biased in this sense of what is
economical.  It gives weight to a virtue (laziness?) that is part of
our society but not necessarily in antiquity.


Two clarification points.  As to Philo, I have in mind not when he went to
school but the language he learned by the time he was two.  As to
"economical".  This is a technical term.  In the context I meant "merged at
the sister of the head of the verb phrase where theta and case features were
checked" as opposed to "merged elsewhere and form a c-command chain to check
theta and case features."

Sincerely,


Mark Beatty




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