1. B. F. Skinner’s Analysis of Verbal Behavior
Mark L. Sundberg, Ph.D., BCBA-D

2. Skinner’s Book Verbal Behavior (1957)
How behavior analysis can help linguistics
“Verbal Behavior…will, I believe, prove to be my most important work” (Skinner, 1978, p. 122)
“It would be foolish to underestimate the difficulty of this subject matter” (Skinner, 1957, p. 3)
“The formulation is inherently practical and suggests immediate technological applications at almost every step” (Skinner, 1957, p. 12)
Primary handicapping condition of autism involves impaired language

3. Verbal Behavior Table of Contents

4. Linguistic Meaning
Problems with the expressive and receptive classification of language
A speaker is said to use words to express meaning (expressive)
A listener is said to understand the meaning of those words (receptive)
Skinner’s (1957) concern was that “Theories of meaning are usually applied to both speaker and listener as if the meaning process were the same for both” (p. 33)
Different contingencies are operating for a speaker and for a listener
The meaning of words is not to be found in a common cognitive processing system, physical referent, response forms, or linguistic structure, but rather in the contingencies, or the “sources of control” that evoke verbal behavior

5. Semantic Theories of Meaning
The mand and intraverbal relations are missed in most theories of language
Skinner (1957) attributes this to traditional semantic theories of meaning that focus on cognitive processing and the physical referents of words
“Intraverbal behavior (is) sometimes dismissed as “spurious language.” (It is) not important to the theorist of meaning because the correspondences between responses and controlling variables do not raise important problems of reference” (pp )
The emphasis on meaning and the physical referents of spoken words, or in Skinner’s terms, nonverbal stimulus control, is why much of the focus of linguistics is on tacts and listener discriminations

6. Linguistic Form and Function
The formal properties of language involve the topography or structure of a verbal response (the dependent variables)
Typically classified in terms of the “parts of speech” (e.g., nouns, verbs, prepositions)
The functional properties of language involve the causes of a response, the variables that evoke and consequate behavior (independent variables)
Traditionally referred to as semantics, or the “meaning of words”
Skinner’s (1957) account of language considers both these elements, but differs from traditional treatments in that he provides a behavioral analysis of semantics

7. Linguistic Form and Function
“Our first responsibility is simple description: what is the topography of this subdivision of human behavior? Once that question has been answered in at least a preliminary fashion we may advance to the stage called explanation: what conditions are relevant to the occurrences of the behavior--what are the variables of which it is a function?” (p. 10).

8. Linguistic Form Form: topography and structure of verbal responses
Phonemes
Morphemes
Lexicon
Syntax
Grammar
Mean length of utterances (MLU); words, phrases, sentences
Classification system: nouns, verbs, prepositions, adjectives, adverbs, etc.

9. Linguistic Function
Function: Language is learned behavior under the functional control of current environmental contingencies, and the speaker and listener’s relevant histories of reinforcement
What makes language a special type of behavior is that it is reinforced through the behavior of a listener, rather than directly from the physical environment
Speakers need listeners because they reinforce, shape, and maintain speaker behavior, but to do so, a listener must have a specific conditioning history

10. Defining Verbal Behavior
Skinner (1957) defined verbal behavior “as behavior reinforced through the mediation of other persons” (p. 2), but these other persons “must be responding in ways which have been conditioned precisely in order to reinforce the behavior of the speaker” (p. 225)

11. The Speaker and the Listener
Skinner (1957) suggests that the behavior of the speaker and listener are controlled by different contingencies
The speaker and listener can be in the same skin
He provides separate but interlocking accounts of speaker and listener behavior and calls their interactions “verbal episodes” (p. 38)
In a verbal episode, a speaker emits any type of verbal behavior (e.g., mand, tact, intraverbal) in any form (speech, sign language, eye contact)
A listener usually serves multiple roles in common verbal episodes

12. The Different Roles of the Listener
1) Necessary for a verbal episode
“The behaviors of the speaker and listener taken together compose what may be called the total verbal episode” (p. 2)
“There is nothing in such an episode which is more than the combined behavior of two or more individuals” (p. 2)
2) The listener functions as an SD and MO for verbal behavior (The Audience, Chapter 7 in VB)
“The listener, as an essential part of the situation in which verbal behavior is observed, is…a discriminative stimulus” (p. 172)
“This function is to be distinguished from the action of the listener in reinforcing behavior” (p. 172)

13. The Different Roles of the Listener
3) The listener consequates a speaker’s behavior
Mediates reinforcement (the definition of VB, p. 2)
“The verbal community maintains the behavior of the speaker with generalized reinforcement” (p. 151)
4) The listener “takes additional action”
“Verbal behavior would be pointless if a listener did nothing more than reinforce the speaker for emitting it” (p. 151)
“The action which a listener takes with respect to the verbal response is often more important to the speaker than generalized reinforcement” (p. 151)

14. The Different Roles of the Listener
There are three types of action (Skinner, 1957)
(1) Nonverbal respondent behavior
“Among the special effects of verbal behavior are the emotional reactions of the listener” (p. 154)
“If a verbal stimulus accompanies some state of affairs which is the unconditioned or previously conditioned stimulus for an emotional reaction the verbal stimulus eventually evokes this reaction” (p. 154) (e.g., “snake,” anger, passion)

15. The Different Roles of the Listener
(2) Nonverbal operant behavior (“Receptive language”)
Listener compliance (e.g., Jump)
Listener discriminations (LDs) (e.g., Touch the car. Where is the number 5?)
Listener Responding by Function, Feature, and Class (LRFFC) (e.g., Can you find an animal? Which one do you eat with?)
“These examples remind us of the fact that the behavior of the listener is not essentially verbal. The listener reacts to a verbal stimulus whether with conditioned reflexes or discriminated operant behavior, as he reacts to any feature of the environment” (p. 170)

16. The Different Roles of the Listener
(3) Verbal operant behavior
“In many important instances the listener is also behaving at the same time as a speaker.” (Skinner, 1957, p. 34)
A listener can verbally respond overtly or covertly to the verbal behavior of a speaker
If the listener emits overt verbal responses he is now the next speaker
But if the listener emits covert verbal behavior, he is now a speaker with his own self as the listener (Skinner, 1957)
Schlinger (2008) suggested that when a listener emits covert verbal behavior in response to a speaker’s verbal behavior the term “listening” should be used to identify this type of verbal behavior

18. A Functional Analysis of Speaker Behavior
Skinner (1957) identified three separate types of antecedent events, along with their related consequences, that control verbal behavior
Motivating variables (MOs) (self, private events)
Nonverbal discriminative stimuli (SDs) (physical world)
Verbal discriminative stimuli (SDs) (from other people, self as well)
Skinner (1957) also points out these causal variables commonly interact with one another, and other variables, as types of multiple causation (Michael, Palmer, & Sundberg, 2011)

19. The Difference Between the Tact, Mand, Echoic, and Intraverbal
Antecedent Behavior Consequence
Nonverbal SD Tact Generalized reinforcement
Motivation (MO) Mand Specific reinforcement
Verbal SD Echoic Generalized reinforcement
(w/ a match)
Verbal SD Intraverbal Generalized reinforcement
(w/o a match)
These are all traditionally called “expressive language”

20. The Distinction Between the Mand and the Tact
Based on the distinction between the establishing operation (MO) and stimulus control (SD) as separate sources of control
Skinnerian psychology (“radical behaviorism,” see Skinner, 1974) has always maintained that motivational control is different from stimulus control (Skinner, 1938, 1953, 1957)
In Behavior of Organisms (Skinner, 1938) Skinner devoted two chapters to the treatment of motivation; Chapter 9 titled “Drive” and Chapter 10 titled “Drive and Conditioning: The Interaction of Two Variables”
Skinner also made it clear in the section titled “Drive Not a Stimulus” (pp ) that motivation is not the same as discriminative, unconditioned, or conditioned stimuli

21. The Distinction Between the Mand and the Tact
Keller and Schoenfeld (1950) state, “A drive is not a stimulus…a drive has neither the status, nor the functions, nor the place in a reflex that a stimulus has…it is not, in itself either eliciting, reinforcing, or discriminative” (p. 276)
Keller and Schoenfeld suggest the term “establishing operation”
The experimental analysis of motivation is mostly absent from the 55 years of research in JEAB
Research has only recently begun to appear in JABA, but it too has been historically absent from that journal

22. Motivating Operations
Skinner discussed the topic of motivation in every chapter of the book Verbal Behavior (1957), usually with his preferred terminology of “deprivation, satiation, and aversive stimulation”
Various refinements and extensions of Skinner’s analysis by Jack Michael and colleagues have extended Skinner’s work (Laraway, Snycerski, Michael, & Poling, 2003; Michael, 1982, 1988, 1993, 2000, 2004, 2007)
The “30 points” paper (Sundberg, 2013) in the handout material provides a comprehensive overview of Skinner’s position regarding the role of motivation in behavior analysis

23. Nonverbal Stimulus Control
Skinner (1957) identified two general types of nonverbal stimulus control that work together as a form of convergent multiple control to evoke verbal behavior:
(1) the audience that “controls a large group of responses” (p. 81)
(2) “nothing less than the whole of the physical environment—the world of things and events which a speaker is said to ‘talk about’” (p. 81)
Classifying tacts can be accomplished by identifying different types of nonverbal SDs that control tacting

24. Nonverbal Stimulus Control
Tacts can be classified by the parts of speech (e.g., nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) because a unique type of nonverbal stimulus control usually controls each part
For example, the nonverbal stimuli that evoke nouns are typically static objects (e.g., car, dog, house), while the nonverbal stimuli that evoke verbs consist of movement (e.g., jump, fall, open)
Adjectives involve a more complex arrangement of nonverbal stimuli where the same properties can occur in different objects (e.g., green, large, heavy), and it is these properties that are the source of control, rather than the object itself (this is termed abstraction by Skinner)

25. Verbal Stimulus Control
We frequently respond to the words of others, and to our own words (e.g., conversations, surfing the Internet, reading, texting)
Verbal SDs have the same causal status as nonverbal SDs in that they both acquire discriminative control over behavior through the process of differential reinforcement
Skinner (1957) defines a verbal stimulus as “the product of earlier verbal behavior” (p. 65)
For example, vocal speech produces auditory stimuli, sign language produces visual stimuli, and Braille dots produces tactile stimuli
These response products can acquire an SD or MO function evoking the behavior of listeners, including one’s self as a listener

26. Verbal Stimulus Control
For example, vocal speech produces auditory stimuli, while texting behavior produces visual stimuli
Composing a text message produces visual response products that function as verbal SDs that may evoke additional behavior from the initial speaker (the texter) such as
self-textual behavior
self-intraverbal behavior
self-autoclitic behavior
self-editing
covert imagery
emotional (respondent) behavior
automatic reinforcement for a clever phrase

27. Verbal Stimulus Control
Receiving a text message is also a verbal SD, but now for the reader and several behavioral relations can be generated
textual
intraverbal
copying a text
transcriptive responses
emotional responses
imagery
nonverbal behavior
automatic consequences
establish new MOs
establish new conditioned reinforcers and conditioned punishers

28. Verbal Stimulus Control: Listener Discriminations and Intraverbal Behavior
Verbal stimuli can evoke both speaker and listener behaviors
Verbal stimuli that can evoke listener discriminations (LDs) and/or intraverbal behavior can be categorized into at least six different types of discriminations (see Sundberg, 2016):
(1) simple
(2) compound
(3) auditory conditional
(4) verbal conditional
(5) verbal function-altering (Schlinger & Blakley, 1994)
(6) part of a multiple stimulus control configuration (Palmer, 2016)

29. Verbal Stimulus Control and Intraverbal Behavior
(1) A simple verbal discrimination involves a single-component verbal stimulus that evokes a non-matching verbal response. For example, a child says “meow” after hearing “A kitty says...”
(2) A compound verbal stimulus involves two or more SDs that each independently evoke behaviors, but when they both occur in the same antecedent configuration, a new SD is generated. For example, saying “blue” after hearing “Red, white, and...”
(3) A verbal conditional discrimination involves one verbal stimulus that alters the evocative and functional effects of another verbal stimulus in the same antecedent configuration (e.g., when asked, “What do you eat with?” versus “What do you wash with?” the words “eat” and “wash” differentially affect the functional properties of the word “with”) (see Sundberg & Sundberg, 2011)

30. Verbal Stimulus Control and Intraverbal Behavior
(4) Verbal stimuli can change the function of other stimuli occurring immediately or at a later point in time (Schlinger & Blakely, 1987, 1994). For example, if a child is told by a teacher “When I call your name (e.g., Zac), sing your part.”
(5) Verbal SDs commonly participate with other independent variables and share the control of verbal behaviors. For example, when shown a red ball and asked “What color is this” and then asked “What shape is this” the verbal stimulus not only alters the evocative effect of the nonverbal stimulus, but both must share control for a correct response to occur

31. Verbal Stimulus Control and Listener Discriminations
Listener discriminations (LDs) can be described as verbal SDs that evoke nonverbal behavior, due to a history of reinforcement
Most listener discriminations involve multiple control in the form of a conditional discriminations involving verbal and nonverbal stimuli
The same five types of verbal discriminations previously described for intraverbal relations, along with an increasingly complex nonverbal stimulus array, can be used as a framework to assess listener behavior
In addition, there is a sixth type of verbal discrimination that is specific to listener behavior commonly termed an auditory conditional discrimination (e.g., Sidman, 1971; Saunders & Spradlin, 1973)

32. Automatic Reinforcement
Skinner did not directly define it
He did not use it as a separate principle of behavior
It does not appear in any of his indexes
He uses the term over 100 times in his books
He also uses “self-reinforcement,” and “self-stimulation” as
synonymous with automatic reinforcement
The most frequent usage occurs in Verbal Behavior
Skinner’s usage of “automatic” is simply to counteract “any tendency to restrict the concept of reinforcement to those occasions upon which it has been deliberately arranged by another person or group” (Vaughan & Michael, 1982, p. 218)

33. Automatic Reinforcement Defined
Automatic reinforcement has the same defining properties as “reinforcement”
Follows behavior
Increases behavior
Under the stimulus conditions it occurs
Automatic reinforcement can be…
Unconditioned
Conditioned
Positive or negative
Intermittent
Increase verbal or nonverbal behavior

34. Automatic Reinforcement
Skinner presents two types of automatic reinforcement (1957, pp ; )
Practical: The reinforcement is provided by the physical environment (“the producing response operates on the surrounding world”)
Artistic/Autistic: The reinforcement is provided by the response product emanating from the behavior. (“The producing response operates on the behaver directly”)

35. Automatic Consequences
Can also have automatic punishment
(e.g., Skinner, 1957, p. 375)
Same types as automatic reinforcement, except behavior decreases
Can also have automatic extinction which has the same behavioral functions as non-automatic extinction (e.g., Skinner, 1957, p. 164)
Perhaps “automatic consequences” is a better term (Skinner does use this term, e.g., p. 442)
What about automatic “stimulus control” and “motivational control?”

36. Automatic Contingencies
Behavior can be shaped by consequences that are not deliberately arranged, including coming under sources of stimulus and motivational control that are not deliberately arranged
Thus, all behavioral principles can affect an organism without direct arrangement from other people
Prehaps “automatic contingencies” is a better term

37. Automatic Reinforcement
Summary: Behavior can be shaped, maintained, or eliminated by automatic contingencies that are not directly set up or mediated by other persons. These contingences can be very efficient and even more precise then those formally arranged
“The exquisite subtlety of our verbal repertoires is shaped by contingencies of automatic reinforcement...one need not wait for the lumbering machinery of social reinforcement to swing into action” (Palmer, 1996, p. 290)
“Money grades and honors must be husbanded carefully, but the automatic reinforcement of being right and moving forward are inexhaustible” (Skinner, 1968, p. 158)

38. Private Events (Jack Michael, 2004)
B. F. Skinner’s philosophical view, Radical Behaviorism, concerns the treatment of private stimuli. Six points, as in S&HB, pp (which Jack modifies slightly) as follows:
1. Behavior is a function of the environment–any event in the universe capable of affecting the organism (stimuli, motivative operations, response–consequence relations)
2. But part of the universe is enclosed within the organism’s own skin (some stimuli originate within the organism’s own skin)
3. Some stimuli, motivation, etc., may therefore be related to behavior in a unique way. The individual’s response to an inflamed tooth, for example, is unlike the response that anyone else can make to that particular tooth, since no one else can establish the same kind of contact with it. These are private events

39. Private Events (Jack Michael, 2004)
4. But we need not suppose that private events have special properties because no one else can establish the same kind of contact with it. They may be distinguished by their limited accessibility but not, so far as we know, by any special structure or nature.
5. We acquire VB under control of public stimuli by the reactions of others to our behavior in the presence of those stimuli. We also acquire VB controlled by private stimuli where others cannot make direct contact with those stimuli. We tact itches, pains, nausea, etc. How is it accomplished?
6. Four ways

40. Private Events (Skinner, 1957)
“(1) A common public accompaniment of the private stimulus which eventually controls the response may be used.” (p. 131)
“(2) A commoner practice is to use some collateral response to the private stimulus.” (p. 131)
“(3) A third possibility is that the community may not need to appeal to private stimuli at all; it may reinforce a response in connection with a public stimulus, only to have the response transferred to a private event by virtue of common properties, as in metaphorical and metonymical extension.” (p. 132)

41. Private Events (Skinner, 1957)
“(4) The original contingency may be based upon the externally observable behavior of the organism, even though this stimulates the speaker and the community in different ways. If the behavior is now reduced in magnitude [response reduction] or scale, a point will be reached at which the private stimuli survive although the public stimuli vanish.” (p. 133)
“In other words, behavior may be executed so weakly or so incompletely that it fails to be seen by another person, although it is still strong enough to stimulate the behaver himself” (p. 133)
Consider the role of private events in arbitrary matching-to-sample experiments with verbal participants

42. Complex Behavior
The functional units of echoic, mand, tact, intraverbal, textual, and taking dictation, and their interactions with listener behavior form the basic foundation of a verbal behavior analysis
“But this is only the beginning. Once a repertoire of verbal behavior has been set up, a host of new problems arise from the interaction of its parts. Verbal behavior is usually the effect of multiple causes. Separate variables combine to extend their functional control, and new forms of behavior emerge from the recombination of old fragments” (p. 10)
“A speaker is normally also a listener. He reacts to his own behavior in several important ways. Part of what he says is under the control of other parts of his verbal behavior” (p. 10)

43. Multiple Control
“Two facts emerge from our survey of the basic functional relations: (1) the strength of a single response may be, and usually is, a function of more than one variable and (2) a single variable usually affects more than one response” (1957, p. 227)
The conditions where the strength of a single verbal response is a function more than one variable can be identified as “convergent multiple control”
The conditions where a single variable affects the strength of more than just one response can be identified as “divergent multiple control” (see Michael, Palmer, & Sundberg, 2011)

44. Multiple Control
Convergent multiple control can be observed in almost all instances of verbal behavior
In convergent multiple control, more than one variable strengthens a response of a single topography
Any type of antecedent event can participate
verbal (e.g., mand, tact, intraverbal, autoclitic)
nonverbal (e.g., visual, auditory, olfactory)
public (e.g., verbal, nonverbal)
private (e.g., pain, self-echoic, self-mand, imagery)
SD (e.g., verbal, nonverbal)
MO (e.g., UMO, CMO, aversive, establishing, abative)
US/CS (e.g., bright light, screeching sound, words)
audience (e.g., lay, professional, friends, non English speaking)
contextual (e.g., settings, temperature, lights, décor)

45. Multiple Control
Convergent multiple control SD
SD R MO

46. Multiple Control
In divergent multiple control, a single variable controls a variety of responses
“Just as a given stimulus word will evoke a large number of different responses from a sample of the population at large, it increases the probability of emission of many responses in a single speaker” (p. 227)
The response can be
Verbal
Nonverbal
Respondent
The behavioral effects of a single stimulus change (Michael, 2004)

47. Multiple Control
Divergent multiple control R1 R2
SD/MO R3 R4 R5

48. The Autoclitic Relation
We manipulate our own verbal behavior in many ways because it has special effects on listeners (e.g., gains their attention, a call for action)
We are often unaware of this additional verbal activity that commonly accompanies our main verbal responses
Skinner devoted three chapters to this type of speaker behavior (Chap 12-14) which he termed “autoclitic” behavior
In the autoclitic relation “Part of the behavior of an organism becomes in turn one of the variables controlling another part. There are at least two systems of responses, one based upon the other. The upper level can only be understood in terms of its relation to the lower level” (Skinner, 1957, p. 313)

49. The Autoclitic Relation
Michael (1991, 1992) suggested that these two levels of responses be identified as primary verbal behavior as the lower level, and secondary autoclitic responses as the upper level
A primary verbal response constitutes any of the verbal operants (e.g., mand, tact, intraverbal, textual)
A secondary autoclitic response is controlled by “some feature of the primary verbal operant or by its controlling variables” (Michael, 1992, p. viii)
The autoclitic function can be carried by words, or the tone of voice, rate of speech, prosody mannerisms, facial movements, etc.

50. The Autoclitic Mand and Tact
Peterson (1978) suggested that secondary verbal behavior be identified as either “autoclitic tacts” or “autoclitic mands”
The autoclitic tact “informs the listener” with respect to some nonverbal aspect of the primary response (including its controlling variables) and is therefore controlled by nonverbal stimuli generated by the primary response of its controlling variables (e.g., its strength)
The autoclitic mand “enjoins the listener” to behave is some way with respect to the primary response and is controlled by MOs generated by the primary response of its controlling variables

51. The Autoclitic Mand
Autoclitic mands manipulate listener behavior in ways reinforcing to a particular speaker
The autoclitic mand enjoins a listener to take some specific action regarding the primary response, and the autoclitic behavior is reinforced by that action
Some specific MO controls the secondary response
For example, the primary response “It’s late” may be accompanied by a secondary autoclitic response consisting of stress on the word “late” that could reveal an MO related to not wanting to go out to dinner
Autoclitic mands are ubiquitous, but since the sources of control are private it is difficult for a listener to tact the fact that MOs are controlling the verbal behavior

52. The Autoclitic Mand
Autoclitic mands can accompany a wide range of daily verbal interactions
For example, a speaker who emits “Believe me, I saw him,” is manding to her listener with “believe me” to verbally accept the following verbal statement “I saw him” as fact
There are many types of autoclitic mands that manipulate and control the behavior of listeners (e.g., hidden agendas, personal bias, urgency, irrelevancy)
They occur in a wide range of topographies and variations such as Listen, From my point of view, Look at it this way, Keep in mind
Negation can also function as an autoclitic mand (e.g., “That’s not mine”)

53. The Autoclitic Tact
Autoclitic tact. An autoclitic tact is a type of secondary verbal behavior that is controlled by some nonverbal aspect of the speaker’s own primary response or its controlling variables
Skinner (1957) identified three types of autoclitic tacts: descriptive, quantifying, and relational
A descriptive autoclitic tact is controlled by the nonverbal properties of the antecedent events and their relation to the primary response

54. The Autoclitic Tact
For example, an autoclitic tact of strength could be observed in a speaker who might say “I’m sure that’s the right exit”
“I’m sure” is a descriptive autoclitic tact that informs the listener of the strength of the primary relation and alters the listener response to “That’s the right exit.”
The listener is benefited by this additional information in that it can assist him in making the best decision at the moment. The speaker is reinforced by the listener’s more informed behavior (to exit or not)

55. The Autoclitic Tact
Quantifying autoclitic tacts inform the listener of the range of application of a primary response (e.g., “Some behavior problems are caused by attention)
The autoclitic “some” informs the listener that the whole statement that follows is restricted in its range. If “all” had been tagged on to the primary response, the listener would behave differently

56. The Autoclitic Tact
Relational autoclitics inform the listener of agreement between aspects of the primary response (e.g., “supervisor’s recommendation,”
The secondary autoclitic behavior functions as a tact of the source of control for the recommendation, and as a tact of the agreement between the source and the recommendation.
Skinner suggested that autoclitic relations play a causal role in complex verbal activities involving grammar, syntax, composition, grouping, ordering, punctuation, predication, and so (e.g., Palmer, 2016)

57. The Autoclitic Tact
Perhaps the most procedurally complex aspect of autoclitic tact training is that the target nonverbal SD must originate from some aspect of the child’s own words, and it is that SD that should evoke the child’s autoclitic response
The task for the adult is to bring the child’s verbal behavior under the control of the child’s own on-going verbal behavior. This is not an easy task
Two possible approaches to autoclitic instruction:
(1) capturing teaching opportunities in natural on-going verbal interactions
(2) formally arranging the necessary antecedent conditions in a discrete trial teaching format

58. Intraverbal Autoclitic Frames
Skinner (1957) suggests that intraverbal autoclitic frames facilitate the connections between words in a given utterance
For example, “If (a boy) has acquired a series of responses such as the boy’s gun, the boy’s shoe, and the boy’s hat, we may suppose that the partial frame the boy’s ______ is available for recombination with other responses. The first time the boy acquires a bicycle, the speaker can compose a new unit the boy’s bicycle...The relational aspects of the situation strengthen a frame, and specific features of the situation strengthen the responses fitted into it” (p. 336)

59. Intraverbal Autoclitic Frames
Intraverbal autoclitic frames provide order, agreement, grouping, and composition of larger units of verbal behavior  
Palmer (2016) notes “many of the structural properties of verbal behavior that so excite the linguist arise, at least in part, from the prevalence of intraverbals and intraverbal control. In particular, autoclitic frames and grammatical tags are largely intraverbal” (p. 101)

60. For an electronic version of this presentation visit:
Thank You!
For an electronic version of this presentation visit: