Re: Human language acquisition

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Joe Legris 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
> Glen M. Sizemore wrote:
>
> > JL: But this suggests that the difference between a dog barking in
> response
> > to his name being called and a child responding correctly to "Will the
> > boy the birthday party is for please stand up!" is simply a matter of
> > degree.
> >
> > GS: Is the dogâs barking an operant under stimulus control of its
> name being
> > called? If so, then the two behaviors mentioned have something in
> common -
> > assuming the childâs behavior is operant behavior under stimulus
> control. I
> > donât have any problem with this.
>
> The point is that children's acquisition of language has not been 
> demonstrated to be operant behaviour under stimulus control. If it is 
> operating then why don't words that are physically similar (i.e. 
> pronunciation, spelling, position in sentence) generally have similar 
> grammatical properties or meanings? Where does it apply?
>
> [snip]

Hold on.

I've read and re-read your objections (and I know the Chomsky line), but 
I don't see what you are objecting to. First of all, there are others 
who have taken a very firm Skinnerian line *and* directly responded to 
Chomsky's odd attacks on empiricism (and I'm not referring to K.M).

I'm not referring to any of your specific points in particular, but 
given that language is our most sophisticated individual behaviour, why 
do you find the absence of a complete and detailed theory to be 
something which in any way vitiates Skinner's thesis that it is an 
operantly shaped set of behaviours? And more importantly, why do you 
find the cognitivist "alternative" in any way helpful or persuasive? 
Surely one could turn the same counter-argument on Chomsky viz the 
failure of machine translation etc?

The overall evidence (and I'm not going to repeat why *I* think there is 
good reason to accept the Radical Behaviorist approach, I've done that 
elsewhere at length and in detail) in favour of the approach would seem 
to be to be rational grounds enough. There is more to this than 
*psychology*.
All that cognitivism has done over the past 40 years or so is distract a 
generation or two of psychologists in my view.
--
David Longley