Re: Human language acquisition

FM: Hi Glen...

Obviously, I have no grasp on the behaviourist (I never know whether or not
to capitalize that) literature concerning language acquisition (I've yet to
read Verbal Behaviour - or Chomsky's review, for that matter -) although I
know that Catania discusses it in his text...

Anyway...what's the behaviourist view on *why* (English-speaking) kids
overregularize and say things like "goed" and "breaked", when those forms
are *never* in their input experience ??

GS: Hi Fred,

First of all a minor point, since some kids do say it, it obviously has the
potential to be in other children's "input experience." But my explanation
doesn't rely on that. Also - another minor point - it is likely that parents
would "let it go" and respond appropriately (or respond appropriately with
correction "he went"), but my explanation doesn't rely on that either.

FM: In particular, why do (English-
speaking) kids *always* do this ??

GS: The answer is fairly straightforward - and it is basically that we
reinforce other instances where the verbs are regular. With what we know
about stimulus control, why wouldn't it generalize? We reinforce many
instances of saying the verb and adding "ed." From everything we know about
doing stuff like this, we would EXPECT over-regularization. Why would we
expect it to hold only for the specific verbs the kid hears, or is
instructed in? We wouldn't - the issue is, and has always been, a red
herring. We should be totally comfortable with this notion - if we
reinforce, say, a pigeon's key-peck to the left key in the presence of
photographs containing trees, and reinforce key-pecks to the right key when
a photograph with no trees is projected, we find that the pigeon performs
accurately only when photographs are presented that it has seen. As we add
more and more exemplars, however, we find that the pigeon now begins to
respond "appropriately" when novel exemplars are presented (here "exemplar"
refers to the actual photograph, not its alleged "memorial representation").
Even if we say that the pigeon has "formed an implicit rule of some sort,"
it is clearly because of the contingencies arranged. But, of course, there
is no reason to say this other than the compelling nature of some metaphors.
But, even if we do want to say that the kid "formed a rule," the formation
of the rule is due to the contingencies arranged and, thus, the
contingencies are what we must manipulate to "cause the behavior in
question." See?

FM: Incidentally, most generative linguists (I can hear your eyes
rolling...*grin*) regard Marcus (1993)[1] as the final nail in the coffin of
the "negative evidence" issue. I'm not quite so sure about it, but there are
some interesting points raised...

Marcus, Gary (1993). "Negative Evidence in Language Acquisition." in
Cognition, 46 (1993), 53-85.

GS: Needless to say, since the problem is so clearly a non-problem born of
Chomsky's misunderstanding and misrepresentation of what behaviorists would
actually predict (and then passed down to generations of students), I do not
spend much time worrying about what mentalists, who don't know shit about
behaviorism and the experimental analysis of behavior, say about predictions
that behaviorists wouldn't even make. But tell me about this. What is meant
by "negative evidence?"

Cheers,

Glen

"Fred Mailhot" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
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