behaviourism (n.)

In LINGUISTICS, the influence of this school of psychology (the study of observable and measurable behaviour) has been most marked in the work of the American linguist Leonard Bloomfield. It can be seen in the BLOOMFIELDIAN insistence on rigorous DISCOVERY PROCEDURES, and most notably in his behaviourist account of MEANING in terms of observable stimuli and responses made by participants in specific situations. The limitations of behaviourist (or ‘mechanistic’) accounts of LANGUAGE (especially that associated with the work of the American psychologist B(urrhus) F(rederic) Skinner (1904– 90) were criticized by Noam Chomsky in the late 1950s, in writings which anticipate the development of mentalistic ideas in linguistics.