A functional analysis of language.

Blackman (1970) wrote a theory paper. He asked, 'What is language if we look at what it does, not how it sounds?' He mapped out how speaker and listener behaviors are shaped by rewards and cues in the setting.

The paper says a word is verbal only when the social environment trains it. Form alone—sounds or letters—does not make something language. Function does.

Abbott (2013) repeats the same call 43 years later: stop fighting over dictionary labels and study the contingencies that keep terms alive. Embregts (2000) sharpens the point by warning us not to treat words as fixed symbols; they are operants, not things. Layng et al. (1984) takes the idea into a mental-health ward, showing that even delusional speech is maintained by pay-offs and can be changed the same way. These papers do not clash—they stack up, each one stretching the 1970 frame to new turf.

When a client echoes 'I want car' but never gets the car, ask what contingency is missing. Map the reinforcers, not the grammar chart. You will write better mand programs and stop blaming 'poor vocabulary' for what is really a broken reward loop.