Some are paraphrased, some are copied. Human learning and animal learning are similar. The child s mind is a tabula rasa. There is no innate pre-programming for language learning at birth. Psychological data should be limited to that which is observable.
All behavior is viewed as a response to stimuli.
Behavior happens in an associative chain. Conditioning involves the strengthening of associations between a stimulus and a response through reinforcement. Human language is a sophisticated response system acquired through operant conditioning. Universal Grammar Theory posits the existence of a set of basic grammatical elements or fixed abstract principles that are common to all natural human languages and that predispose children to organize the input in certain ways. Hmm. . .