Jackendoff (2003) cites the following statements as typical examples of folk-linguistic beliefs. • Claim: "Parents teach their children to talk". Adults assume that children either learn language directly from their parents or via simple
imitation. • On the contrary, research in child
language acquisition shows that a child acquires language more automatically, through a systematic pattern rarely noticed by adults. Although interaction with parents, adults, and other children is crucial, it is very difficult to "correct" a child. Instead, most children can learn to speak native languages (including those of their peers of the same age) through a process called "acquisition". Any
errors noticed by a parent are often self-corrected by the child weeks or months later. • Claim: "Children will get confused if they try to speak more than one language". Many parents are afraid a child cannot sort out input from multiple languages. • In reality, children can easily become
multilingual if they are exposed to more than one language. There may be a period of confusion, but most children are able to segregate many distinct grammars. • Claim: "There is a proper, correct English". Speakers generally value an educated form of the language, often its written form, and that other
dialectal/spoken forms are considered structurally inferior or "sloppy", and speakers of these forms are often regarded as "stupid, lazy, sloppy, hick" or other pejorative terms. • However, linguists generally agree that vernacular varieties such as
African American Vernacular English (AAVE) have the same grammatical complexity as
standard forms of English. Folk linguistic beliefs view these lects as inferior, and as a result speakers of
non-standard forms often suffer forms of
linguistic discrimination. ==See also==