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Chomsky and Skinner

The two men share greatly two differing views and ideas to the acquisition of grammar in
humans. Skinner, a behavioral psychologist and Chomsky a linguist, their branches of
science are already different. Skinner's explanation of language was that 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
not be used again. Chomsky differed in his view that human grammar acquisition is an
innate biological ability that all humans possess, and viewed some form of `generative
grammar' which he felt The two men share greatly differing views and ideas to the
acquisition of grammar in could explain the rapid acquisition and creative nature of
grammar and language.

B.F Skinner and his colleagues,( a group of psychologists known as behaviorists ), said that
learning, or a change of behavior on the part of the learner, was brought about by a process
known as operant conditioning. I am going to give a very simple example of this kind of learning.

Imagine that a new superior office comes to work in your department. You need to discuss
business with him every day, but when you attempt to do this early on his second morning, he is
not at all friendly. In fact, he is rather rude. When you try again at 11 a.m. however, you receive a
warm welcome and a cup of tea. You find that the same pattern is repeated during the next few
days.

As per the example just mentioned, you would quickly learn that one form of behavior was
acceptable to your new boss, and one was not. You would adapt, or change your behavior
accordingly.

Skinner called this process operant conditioning. Conditioned behavior is behavior which is the
result of repeated training.

But what did Chomsky offer in place of behaviorism as an explanation of language learning? He
subscribed to an entirely different view of learning from that of behaviorists. He followed a
mentalist approach , based on cognitive learning. By cognitive learning is meant the way in which
we relate new events or items of knowledge to other concepts which are already present in our
minds. By mentalism we mean something which involves the mind and the thought processes.

Chomsky and his mentalist followers claimed that a child learns his first language through
cognitive learning. They claim that language is governed by rules, and is not a haphazard thing,
as skinner and his followers would claim. According to Chomsky, the child is born with a mental
capacity for working out the underlying system to the jumble of sounds which he hears. He
constructs his own “mental grammar’ and imposes it on all the sounds reaching his brain. This
mental grammar is part of his cognitive framework, and nothing he hears is stored in his brain
until he has matched it against what he already knows and found a ‘correct’ place for it within
this framework.

What evidence did Chomsky and his followers have for these theories?

Once a child has acquired his native language, he has the ability to produce perfectly grammatical
sentences that he has never produced before. We cannot say that has leanrt these sentences by
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imitation. The only answer is that he must have discovered some underlying ‘rules’ that enable
him to go on making such sentences.

People usually don’t remember how they learned to speak, but everybody speaks their first
language without any problems. Some Children even speak more than two languages naturally.
Language is a unique system which only humans have. However, if it’s correct rules or grammars
of language people might have to study. There also seems to be critical period for learning
language.
People speak their language without studying. It means people already have an ability of
language pattern in their brain

In an article, Chomsky says “human brain contains a language acquisition device (LAD) which
automatically analyzes the components of speech a child hears.” I support this theory. The human
brain has special function, unlikely other animals. That’s why only humans speak languages.
Learning language for a human is very easy because the human brain already contains ability of
language, so even children start to speak language naturally in their early age.

People in young age are very easy to acquire more than two languages at same time. Even if those
languages are very different, and their parents don’t speak those languages. It also proves people
must have an ability to function in any language innately.
In contrast theory, there is a very famous case. A girl, Genie got deprived of her mother tongue
during her critical period, which is considered to be between 4 and 12, of learning first language,
and she couldn’t acquire her language skill normally even though she studied. This fact supports
B. F. Skinner’s theory. However, this is a very unusual case. She might not have only language
problem, but even mental problem since she was locked in a room for 13 years. There is also a
proof that Genie was about to speak without studying right after she was locked up. “since her
mother reported that she heard Genie saying words right after she was locked up”
Since Genie’s case was discovered, Chomsky added to his theory that “the innate mechanisms
that underlie this competence must be activated by exposure to language at the proper time” This
theory got little closer to B. F Skinner’s theory. Even young children speak language without
learning, but they often make mistakes in their speech. While they are growing, their number of
mistakes in their speech decreases. They are learning how to speak, so in this case some part of
Skinner’s theory is also correct.
Similarly, learning second language for people in older age supports Skinner’s theory. People
have to keep learning language to improve their second language. It hardly ever gets perfect
because people have to learn all rules and structures from beginning which don’t apply to their
first language. If we have learning language system innately, why can’t we easily adjust to speak
another language? We can’t apply Chomsky’s theory at all in this case.
In conclusion, until people reach critical period of learning language, people learn their language
automatically without being taught because of their innate ability of language. Furthermore, if
there are more than two languages which children hear, children will be able to acquire both of
them at the same time. Nevertheless, the ability of language has to be activated in the first place
by something. Otherwise, people never begin to acquire their language. Once people past the
critical period, it is hard to learn any language. Thereby, people in older age usually have problem
learning second language. Both Chomsky’s and Skinner’s theories are correct in different cases
and language acquisition system works with both of them together.