> Chomsky played a part in killing behaviourism, but a lot of other people were
> involved. To his credit, Chomsky has never claimed that he slayed Skinner's
> beast. His review of "Verbal Behaviour" was seminal in linguistics, but it
> played little role elsewhere.
Chomsky's review played a much larger role everywhere than it should have, given that it consists mostly of slander, misinterpretations and misunderstandings.
> Chomsky's followers have difficulty claiming much empirical basis for GG and
> haven't made any real progress in understanding the functioning of human
> language on this basis.
He has the unique distinction of having stymied progress not just in his own field, but several others, including Psychology and Artificial Intelligence.
-- bill
"Those who so triumphantly announce the death of behaviorism are announcing their own escape from the canons of scientific method." - B.F. Skinner