The Chomsky-Place correspondence 1993-1994.
Old letters show the language war between nativist grammar and behaviorism is still alive in today’s therapy choices.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Dugdale et al. (2000) printed the private letters between linguist Noam Chomsky and behavior analyst Ullin Place.
The two wrote back and forth for a year, arguing about how humans learn to talk.
No lab, no kids, no data—just two thinkers trading sharp questions and replies.
What they found
Chomsky said behaviorism can’t explain why we can say brand-new sentences we’ve never heard.
Place shot back that a “dispositional” view—looking at how past speaking was reinforced—can fill the gap.
The letters end in a stalemate: nativist grammar versus behavioral contingencies.
How this fits with other research
Davison et al. (2003) picked up the same fight inside behavior analysis itself. Michael and Malott argued whether Skinner’s old verbal operants are enough or we need newer RFT tools.
Najdowski et al. (2003) threw data onto the table, claiming lab studies on arbitrarily applicable relational responding force us to accept RFT.
Leigland (2000), printed the same year, quietly solved one of Place’s puzzles by showing listener praise can reinforce whole chains of talk—no new principle required.
Palmer (2023) now offers autoclitic frames as a fresh behavioral way to handle grammar, answering Chomsky’s old syntax complaint without leaving Skinner’s house.
Why it matters
If you teach language to kids with autism, you swim in this debate every day.
Knowing the fight helps you pick tools: classic mand-tact training, RFT protocols, or Palmer-style autoclitic drills.
Pick one, run it, take data—then you add the next brick to the wall instead of just arguing about the blueprint.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Edited correspondence between Ullin T. Place and Noam Chomsky, which occurred in 1993-1994, is presented. The principal topics are (a) deep versus surface structure; (b) computer modeling of the brain; (c) the evolutionary origins of language; (d) behaviorism; and (e) a dispositional account of language. This correspondence includes Chomsky's denial that he ever characterized deep structure as innate; Chomsky's critique of computer modeling (both traditional and connectionist) of the brain; Place's critique of Chomsky's alleged failure to provide an adequate account of the evolutionary origins of language, and Chomsky's response that such accounts are "pop-Darwinian fairy tales"; and Place's arguments for, and Chomsky's against, the relevance of behaviorism to linguistic theory, especially the relevance of a behavioral approach to language that is buttressed by a dispositional account of sentence construction.
The Analysis of verbal behavior, 2000 · doi:10.1007/BF03392953