ABSTRACT
First-language acquisition classically proceeds from single-word utterances to pairs of words that typically lack all grammatical function words, including copular verbs and can just consist of pairs of nouns, with no verbs. Noam Chomsky himself notes the limitations on experiments to verify the linguistic intuitions of native speakers but rests his case on the mass of evidence and knowledge, albeit often tacit, about grammaticality which the native speaker can draw upon. Chomsky’s influence was massive in the USA and beyond, and it is impossible to understand how a particular type of second language acquisition study emerged and developed without taking account of his work. In 1959 Chomsky published a critique of the behaviourist psychologist B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. The title of Skinner’s book and Chomsky’s reaction to its contents are telling. Skinner abandons terms such as ‘speech’ and ‘language’, preferring the term ‘behaviour’.
