... structure is largely content free, i.e. when born our brains are empty, save for general purpose learning mechanisms that operate on input from the senses. Knowledge is built through the learner's experience of the world. For empiricists then language development is the result of interaction with the environment. Skinner, another early empiricist, believed children develop language through what he called 'operant conditioning'. When the child begins to make sounds and words they are 'rewarded' with positive responses from their caregivers. When the child says an incorrect word the caregiver response is either nil or negative. The child therefore learns to drop the incorrect words and only use the correct words. Skinner in his 'Verbal Behaviour' also argued that language developed because it was evolutionary useful. The need to communicate necessitated the development of language. Language ability is not therefore innate but driven by external factors. Bruner (pg 73, First Words, ...

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