Some linguistic theories argue that to learn conjugation, children will over apply suffixes to the roots, eventually figuring out which ones are acceptable and which are not. We hear English-speaking children using phrases such as, “*He go-ed away.” (He went away.)

Psychologists believe that too. But a key part of the psychological perspective on language learning is how kids figure out what’s acceptable and what’s not, and neural network models in particular suggest that no formal “rule” teaching is necessary. Being exposed over and over and over again to correctly-conjugated verbs will produce the same pattern: an initial overgeneralization of -ed, followed by learning of the irregular conjugations.

Some linguistic theories argue that to learn conjugation, children will over apply suffixes to the roots, eventually figuring out which ones are acceptable and which are not.

Makes sense to me. My German goddaughter does more or less the same thing with declension right now, and is learning through trial and error to recognize case and gender.

And as someone who grew up speaking an agglutinative language at home, I know full well the puzzle that morphemes can be. Sometimes they’re fun ones, and sometimes they can just be a pain in the ass.

Take the German verb kennen, meaning “to know (a person)”:
Ich kenne
Du kennst
Er/Sie/Es kennt
Wir kennen
Ihr kennt
Sie/sie kennen

The root, kenn- holds the meaning. The suffix endings indicate the subject.

Some linguistic theories argue that to learn conjugation, children will over apply suffixes to the roots, eventually figuring out which ones are acceptable and which are not. We hear English-speaking children using phrases such as, “*He go-ed away.” (He went away.)

In linguistic notation, an asterisk [*] indicates an unacceptable example within the grammar of a language.

With regard to the Chinese example, in doing research for a paper on Chinese syntax, I found that the acceptability of utterances varied based on geography and upbringing. Even siblings disagreed on the validity of some sentences.

I don’t think there’s anything fundamentally unsound about this guy’s premise. After all, this is essentially how babies acquire their first language. They listen to it every day, all day long, and then stuff suddenly starts making sense to them. And eventually, their output starts making sense too. There aren’t any classes or formal drills–or even if there are, it just feels like play to them.

Furthermore, there are languages out there without written systems–although they are admittedly fewer than there used to be–so there are plenty of people for whom reading and writing is moot. There are also lots of people who never go to school and thus never learn the “standard” way that has been dictated by La Real Academia Española, L’ Académie Française, or just the local self-appointed guardian of Language Purity. And even beyond these circumstances, I had a professor last year who was fond of saying that there are plenty of native-born Americans who would never get a 5 on the English language ILR.

So, yeah. There are better ways to learn Spanish than committing 501 Spanish Verbs to memory. If you want to be able to get through–and, more importantly, understand what people are saying back to you–I’m all for this method if you have the time.

BUT (and you knew that was coming, didn’t you?) I think it’s pretty clear that this method, and other “passive” language learning methods have their limits. But this has already turned into a long enough comment, so I think I’ll bring that up elsewhere.

BTW, much WIN! for the post slug.