Chomsky's repudiation of behaviourism

An important event in the early history of cognitive science was Chomsky's 1959 review in Language of Skinner's 1957 book Verbal Behavior:

• In human language behaviour, ``stimulus'' is not well defined as in more restricted domains of animal behaviour. Name of person may be recalled in absense of the person. ``I have often used the words Eisenhower and Moscow (without ever having been) stimulated by the corresponding objects.'' So also the terms ``response'', ``reinforcement'', ``conditioning''.

• Language use is a creative activity - no bound on gramatically well-formed sentences one might produce or hear. Almost every sentence uttered is a new combination of words.

• Poverty of stimulus argument
  • There is not enough information in the language samples given to children to account for the richnes and complexity of their acquired language. The sentences in the child's environment provide too impoverished a database for S-R learning to occur.

  • Language development in normal children is rapid, its pattern is similar across children (and it is not based on parental speech). Humans must be specially designed to acquire language. An innate Universal grammar must guide the child's inductions from input.