Chomsky vs. Skinner

Skinner, a behavioural psychologist any acquisition was due to a learning process involving the shaping of grammar into a correct form by the re-enforcement of other stimulus, correct grammar is positively re-enforced and will be used in the future, and incorrect grammar is negatively re-enforced and will be not be used again. Chomsky a linguist human grammar acquisition is an innate biological ability that all humans possess, and viewed some form of `generative grammar' which he felt could explain the rapid acquisition and creative nature of grammar and language.

B.F Skinner Behavioural Psychologist: underlying mental processes are not observable and thus invalid. No underlying meaning to words verbal behavior was due to the conditioning that occurs between the words and reinforcement through stimulus If a person asks for a glass of water, she gets one social reinforcement in the form of praise and encouragement past experiences of verbal behavior determine whether it will be used again Verbal Operant Conditioning Five Verbal Operants: Mands, Tacts, Ethoics, Textuals and IntraVerbals grammatical acquisition using an Autoclitic

1.Mand: command or request is met with production (comMAND, deMAND) 2.Tacts: based on child's reference to non-verbal objects with praise for correct naming i.e. child says "cat" and mother says "good girl, that is a cat". 3.Echoic: imitation of speech and can be reinforced by a variety of means including "repeat after me". 4.Textual: learning to read through positive stimulus 5.Intraverbal: word association, whereby one word controls which other word follows or precededs—table / chair

Autoclitic A form of commentary on one of the Verbal Operants Autoclitics have Verbal Operant qualities Example: Tact: Harry bought a house. Echoic: I hear that Harry bought a house. Text: I read in the paper that Harry bought a house. Correct Verbal Operant and Autoclitic comment (correct grammar) are positively reinforced (praise, results) Incorrect grammar is negatively reinforced Analyzing language through verbal operants and autoclitic parts is very complex

Noam Chomsky an infant enters this world predisposed to learning a language fluently In human biological make-up “Generative Grammar”: limitless generation of meaning finite set of rules operating on a finite vocabulary to generate an infinite number of acceptable grammatical sentences and no un- acceptable ones from a small number words, using rules, humans create limitless meaning

transformational grammar: surface structure (language person actually uses) patterned on deep structure (acquisition of rules) once a child can master these rules and transformations, it has the ability to create and expand on his/her grammar by using these rules to create new sentences that it has not heard before