Date: Sat, 18 Jan 1997 12:50:50 -0500 (EST) From: jcook@awod.com (Jesse S. Cook III) Subject: Re: competence Sender: owner-linganth@cc.rochester.edu X-Sender: jcook@awod.com To: Kerim Friedman Cc: linganth@cc.rochester.edu MIME-version: 1.0 Precedence: bulk On 17 January 1997, Kerim Friedman wrote:

>Maybe this is too reductive, but I always make a simple distinction between "cognitive capacity" and "cognitive skills." We all have the same capacity, but we have to learn the skills.

Excuse me, but upon what basis do you state: "We all have the same [cognitive] capacity..."? Maybe I don't understand what you mean by "capacity", but it seems to me self evident that we are all unique and, therefore, have different capacities, cognitive or otherwise.

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>Speakers of BE who belong to street gangs are just as able of logical reasoning as those who speak standard english.

Has this been empirically proven? If so, by whom, and where can the proof be found?

I would suspect that speakers of Black English would be capable of a logic consistent with that language and the speakers of Standard English would be capable of a logic consistent with that language. That those logics are interchangeable, I think is open to question.

Jesse S. Cook III E-Mail: jcook@awod.com
Post Office Box 40984 or
Charleston, SC 29485 USA 201-9573@mcimail.com

"There is only one success--to be able to spend your life
in your own way."--Christopher Morley (1890-1957)

"...it is not for our faults that we are disliked and even hated,
but for our qualities."--Bernard Berenson (1865-1959)
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