Adrianslont wrote:On the larger issues of this discussion, I am philosophically in the camp that most language acquisition research is well over a hundred years behind the sciences in terms of being good science. So, while I can be interested in the questions that are being considered, I don't find the studies of those questions very convincing. I tend to prefer the thick descriptions people give of their approaches, successes and failures here and on the old forum, especially when they are written up as clearly subjective.
And, while the brain is a fascinating thing, I believe that it's still very early days in knowing how it actually works - especially in relation to such complex tasks as learning a language that take place over years and not in labs. I probably won't be convinced that anything substantial can be known about the brain and language acquisition until people can wear MRI machines 24/7 and the data be tracked and stored and better models of language have been devised - but that seems a way off to me.
My wife often says that science is the new religion, and I agree with her. It's so easy to think we know so much more than we do because of the human tendency to apply quantitative reasoning to a qualitative world.