http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Functionalism-(linguistics)

In the functional paradigm a language is in the first place conceptualized as an instrument of social interaction among human beings, used with the intention of establishing communicative relationships. Within this paradigm one attempts to reveal the instrumentality of language with respect to what people do and achieve with it in social interaction. A natural language, in other words, is seen as an integrated part of the communicative competence of the natural language user (2, p. 3)

So the native language user is necessarily an expert in his/her language regardless of his/her familiarity with "grammar" per se.

functional grammar differs significantly from other linguistic theories which stress purely formal approaches to grammar, for instance Chomskyan generative grammar

We get so wrapped up in attaching the appropriate suffix or whatever we lose our grasp and this makes it impossible to teach real spanish eg that you can use to talk to actual natives.

Truth be told, if one learns proper grammar, syntax, etc. of a language, such as Spanish, the natives can understand the speaker, and given time and exposure to the culture, the linguist will be able to learn better what the natives mean. This way, they learn proper grammar, and at at the same time, their understanding of the language and culture will be forced to grow. It's a win-win situation.

Truth be told, if one learns proper grammar, syntax, etc. of a language, such as Spanish, the natives can understand the speaker, and given time and exposure to the culture, the linguist will be able to learn better what the natives mean. This way, they learn proper grammar, and at at the same time, their understanding of the language and culture will be forced to grow. It's a win-win situation.

Your whole post is full of presumptive statments long dismissed by most linguists.
The issue of what is "proper" gets cloudy under scrutiny.There are idealized forms of language only approppriate under certain rigidly controlled circumstances.
It wouldn't make a lot of sense for me to limit myself to Castilian Spanish when I'm waiting ona bunch of Mestizos who don't use that dialect.
If noone is teaching the sounnd system and grammar and slang of the Spanish we actually have to use that's a failure on the part of Academia to be pragmatic.

While I was learning Spanish, I had the same teacher twice. He spent years in Costa Rica, so what he would do is say that this is how it should be said properly, but the slang terminology for this or that is this or that. This way, we learned the proper and slang forms.
Now Mike, Spanish has an official College that states the grammatical, syntactical, etc. of Spanish. The Royal Academy of Spain or something like that. Anyway, a group of guys years and years and years ago sat around and developed the language. This order and structure has been a hallmark of Spanish.
Overall, Spanish is not significantly different from place to place. The specifics, to the casual observer, are easily missed. One must spin a significant period of time in this area or that area to notice the difference. Furthermore, there is the issue that slang in Spanish is easily decipherable.

My clients swallow the first letter or sometimes the first syllable of the word-they use grammtical structures probably left over from some old forgotten american indian language-it's been hard learning how to talk to these people.
I have to use distributional analysis and a lot of the field tools for linguistics starting from scratch.
Maybe if I had a more formal exposure to Spanish it would help with some of the vocabulary problems but these guys are tough.
I respect your experience with Costa Rica-maybe you have an instinctive grasp of this stuff-I have to learn from books.
Same thing with Ebonics,until I read about it I had no idea what they were talking about.
The people from Spain and Argentina are a lot easier to follow.Their speech is closer to Castilian.

That's because they follow it. You're talking to people who learned gutter-Spanish, really. A messed up mixture of various languages in varying states of abuse. One cannot teach how to communicate with such people through an academic field. Frankly, one needs real world experience. Knowing the proper usage allows one to determine what they're saying with greater ease.

I have a number of books in my lbrary dealing with the acquisition of language in a pre literate society-they've done some good work.
Flam,don't discount functionalism,it may not supplant your belief system now,but they raise certain issues a language person needs to be conversant with.

Hey, I'm not knocking it, but as we get older, it's harder to learn new languages, and it's easier to be understood universally. It also allows learning the nuanes of a language much easier.

The arbitrary mapping of sound to meaning is easier when you're young but the systemic parts of language;semantics and discerning deeper patterns-this comes with age.

Exactly.

Exactly.

I hate it when you go and on like this...

BTW*sarcasm*

Your whole post is full of presumptive statments long dismissed by most linguists.
The issue of what is "proper" gets cloudy under scrutiny.There are idealized forms of language only approppriate under certain rigidly controlled circumstances.
It wouldn't make a lot of sense for me to limit myself to Castilian Spanish when I'm waiting ona bunch of Mestizos who don't use that dialect.
If noone is teaching the sounnd system and grammar and slang of the Spanish we actually have to use that's a failure on the part of Academia to be pragmatic.

Pretentious pseudo-intellectualism is rampant...or is it "rampent?"

Pseudoly,
Samson

Pretentious pseudo-intellectualism is rampant...or is it "rampent?"

Pseudoly,
Samson

That's a different thread in this journal-ok,look I'm pedantic-it's rampant,btw-I'm pretentious and a pseudo intellectual,I'm a dad blamed clerk in a bus station-not one of these highly paid sophisticated commissars overseeing the American Megalithic Educational System...
Pseudoly,you crack me up-I think if it were a word you'd have to double the l...

That's a different thread in this journal-ok,look I'm pedantic-it's rampant,btw-I'm pretentious and a pseudo intellectual,I'm a dad blamed clerk in a bus station-not one of these highly paid sophisticated commissars overseeing the American Megalithic Educational System...
Pseudoly,you crack me up-I think if it were a word you'd have to double the l...

"highly paid sophisticated commissars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Where are the damn mods when my fragile sensabilities have been harmed??

j/k,
Samson

You're right Sam,I'm sorry I said you were sophisticated.

You're right Sam,I'm sorry I said you were sophisticated.


:soapbox:

You know I think that simley is talking Chinese!