英语四级阅读200篇:Unit 49 passage 1_大学英语阅读

英语四级阅读200篇:Unit 49 passage 1

　　There is possibly an element of irrational prejudice in this determination, but another reason has to do with scientific method. A researcher often feels the need of a precisely defined body of material with which to work, a corpus, and in compiling it he may find that birth and education in the relevant country are useful criteria, because they are easy to define and to verify. A widening of the criteria to comprise competent non-native speakers as well would create difficulty because of the possible and indeed likely heterogeneity of their backgrounds. In practice, therefore, a language is often equated with the combined usages of the body of native speakers , and so a doctrine has arisen that the native speaker is always right , because anything that he utters is considered part of the language and worthy of record. From this position it is but a short step to the view that the language belongs to the native speakers , who are the sole owners.

　　In Noam Chomskys grammatical theory the native speaker-hearer originally played the role of arbiter of grammaticality, but Chomsky has since changed his position. A few years ago, in a symposium edited by Thomas M. Paikeday, The Native Speaker is Dead his contribution amounted to saying that there are no languages or dialects but only idiolects, and more than one such for each individual. Nevertheless, he said, some idiolect are close enough to be regarded as identical for practical purposes and thus to constitute a language in ordinary usage . Grammaticality, on this view, becomes a matter of compromise. We find that some issues are relegated by Chomsky to what he calls questions of convenience for certain purposes and questions of grammaticality appear to belong to that category. There is thus no Chomskyan support for the traditional notion of native speakership , and as for second language users, their speech is apparently to be accommodated under idiolects. This interpretation seems to be implied in a brief remark about the radical effect that late second language learning may have on an individuals steady state , on his bunch of idiolects.