Samples of Writing

“Relatively late in its history, the human species underwent a remarkable change: its vocal musculature came under operant control. Like other species, it had up to that point displayed warning cries, threatening shouts, and other innate responses, but vocal operant behavior made a great difference because it extended the scope of the social environment. Language was born, and with it many important characteristics of human behavior for which a host of mentalistic explanations have been invented” (Skinner, 1974, p. 98).

This quote represents the opening paragraph of Chapter 6, “Verbal Behavior” in Skinner’s About Behaviorism, published in 1974. Here, Skinner begins to discuss the impact that language, under the control of the user, has had on the human species. He also introduces the notion of the social environment, which of course plays a significant role in how language is acquired and developed under behaviorist theory.


“A great deal has been made of the fact that a child will ‘invent’ a weak past tense for a strong verb, as in saying ‘he goed’ instead of ‘he went.’ If he has never heard the form ‘goed’ (that is, if he has associated only with adults), he must have created a new form. But we do not speak of ‘creation’ if, having acquired a list of color words and a list of object words, he for the first time says ‘purple automobile.’ The fact that the terminal ‘-ed’ suggests ‘grammar’ is unnecessarily exciting. It is quite possible that it is a separable operant, as a separate indicator of the past tense or of completed action in another language might be, and that ‘go’ and a terminal ‘-ed’ are put together, as ‘purple’ and ‘automobile’ are put together, on a novel occasion. The so-called creative aspect of verbal behavior will be mentioned again later” (Skinner, 1974, p. 112).

This quote closes the chapter mentioned above. It corresponds nicely with what was discussed in the “Limitations” section in that Skinner does not seem to want to acknowledge that any part of language learning is based on rules, which is something Chomsky wrote about in relation to Skinner and Chomsky’s issues with verbal behavior as a part of behavioral theory (Chomsky, 1959). A child who says “goed” does seem to be following a rule. It could be that the two word parts (go plus –ed) are being arbitrarily put together as Skinner suggests above. But how likely is this to occur as a spontaneous speech act? It does not seem too likely at all. More likely is that the child is following a rule about the past tense that has been learned through exposure and experience. Skinner, writing this after Chomsky’s review, may have felt the need to address the aforementioned limitation but it seems like he needs to do better than the explanation given above.