What does it mean to explain something?
1 In my advanced verbal behavior class at Western New England University, we like to begin with the most general question one can ask when trying to understand something about …
Shakespeare’s Alchemy
Apparently, Lawrence was right. Visitations by zombies to the streets of Rome has happened before. Here’s how Shakespeare reported the “Caesar incident” in the opening scene of Hamlet: In the …
What Kind of Verbal Operant is “Right?”
5 I am not the first person to wonder, “What is the function of asking Right? in the middle of a sustained flow of verbal behavior?” As the internet is …
Grammar: An Icelandic Saga
As I pointed out in a 2023 paper, the principal limitation of Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior is that it fails to address grammar. To put it somewhat differently, it …
What is a Pronoun?
A correspondent asked, “From a behavioral perspective, what is a pronoun?” This was my response (lightly edited): Several possible responses came to mind. A) It’s not a behavioral concept, so …
Origins of the Concept of the Autoclitic
9 Despite the suspicions of vulgar-minded behavior analysts, Skinner’s term “autoclitic” has distinguished antecedents. The “enclitic,” is a long-established grammatical term for a morphological unit that does not stand alone …
On the Force of Coincidence and Joint Control
2 I was walking across campus one day when I saw Ingrid crossing the sidewalk a hundred feet or more ahead of me. She had been a prize student in …
The Power of Lies and the First Amendment
3 The Sept. 5, 2008 edition of [the Onion] reported that a damp stain on a concrete wall in Tennessee bore a striking resemblance to the features of Charles Darwin. …