Language Acquisition

I found some old pictures, still in frames, inside my hassock, from every time DN and I visited each other. I found a wedding invitation, samples of perfume, notes written on scraps of paper. Notes that are no longer important, written on old checkbooks, "4:30 Monday, visit NH." Notes for html codes, "cornflower blue #6495ED." Notes on linguistic examples:

1a. Paint the red barn.
1b. Paint the barn red.
2a. See the red barn.
2b. *See the barn red.

I remember why I wrote this. It's about language acquisition. If children simply follow a pattern, how would they know that 2b is ill-formed? They don't follow a pattern, because there are tons of examples like this. Children are hard-wired to identify the adjective-noun order of English, and they will recognize 1b as having a special meaning, independent of 1a. The proper write-up involves elaborate phrase-structure tree drawings, and I'd love to impress you by drawing a likely-incorrect tree and BS-ing my way through, but I'm kind of preparing to go to China. I think you get it.

-MsLin