Skinner’s Quote of the Day

By saying When you hear a bell, you will feel a shock, we construct a future response to a bell. The new stimulus here is nonverbal, as in the original…

When shock has become an effective conditioned stimulus, it may be paired with another verbal stimulus in a situation which is wholly verbal. By saying When I say “three”, you…

Parentheses have an almost pictorial character in separating one response from another, as do dashes used either as the equivalent of parentheses or as a sign of breaking off. (p.…

The colon has a sophisticated function equivalent to that of the autoclitic as follows. The apostrophe, both in the possessive’s or s’, is a relational autoclitic with no vocal parallel.…

Quotation marks are obviously associated with the autoclitic he said. The effect is carried vocally by intonation and timing. (p. 356)

The “punctuation” of written verbal behavior is perhaps the best example of compositional autoclitic behavior. It satisfies our criteria because it cannot occur until primary behavior is available to be…

Written verbal behavior can be two-dimensional or, rarely, three-dimensional. Tables, lists, charts, systems of indices, and so on, are all verbal devices in which autoclitic arrangements are carried out in…

In a rather speculative way we may reconstruct the process of composition by analyzing a segment of behavior into (1) its essential operants, (2) the intraverbals possibly arising from these…

In general we are reinforced for complete sentences and punished for broken or fragmentary expressions, and variables strengthening only a few responses tend to evoke complete sentences through multiple causation.…

Some sentences are standard responses to situations comparable to well-memorized verses or maxims or oaths. Others are nearly complete skeletal “frames” upon which an exceptional response or two may be…

Some simple sentences are generated simply by adding autoclitics to available verbal operants. (p. 345)

The ultimate explanation of autoclitic behavior lies in the effect it has upon the listener—including the speaker himself. In general the reactions of the listener at issue are those which…

The speaker not only emits verbal responses appropriate to a situation or to his own condition, he clarifies, arranges, and manipulates this behavior. His activity is autoclitic because it depends…

No one can emit a tact in response to all honest men or to all instances of saying honest. The statement [All honest men are happy] really concerns the defining…

Much rewriting consists of trying different starts, in the sense of responding to different aspects of the situation and adding different grammatical tags. (p. 338)

Something less than full-fledged relational autoclitic behavior is involved when partially conditioned autoclitic “frames” combine with responses appropriate to a specific situation. Having responded to many pairs of objects with…

In general, as verbal behavior develops in the individual speaker, larger and larger responses acquire functional unity, and we need not always speculate about autoclitic action when a response appears…

The manipulation of verbal behavior, particularly the grouping and ordering of responses, is also autoclitic. Responses cannot be grouped or ordered until they have occurred or at least are about…

Purely formal analyses of grammar and syntax (in which, for example, parts of speech are defined in terms of formal properties, including frequency or order of association with other parts…

An extension of the autoclitic formula permits us to deal with certain remaining verbal responses (for example, shall, of, but, and than) and certain fragments of responses which occur in…

Although autoclitics are set up by the verbal community because they are useful to the listener, we must not forget that the speaker is himself a listener and that he…

In the absence of any other verbal behavior whatsoever autoclitics cannot occur. We do not simply say almost or perhaps or some or the. It is only when [primary] verbal…

We sometimes add autoclitics to the verbal behavior of another speaker: we emphasize what he has said by saying True!, we qualify it by saying Maybe, and we deny it…

In a logical or linguistic analysis of the response All swans are white, it may be admissible to say that all refers to, or modifies, swans. In a scientific account…

An autoclitic affects the listener by indicating either a property of the speaker’s behavior or the circumstances responsible for that property. (329)

Another kind of autoclitic affects the reaction of the listener by indicating the kind or degree of extension of a tact. When we respond to a novel stimulus with a…

The kinship of is with Yes is apparent in the common coupling Yes, it is. Its function as a descriptive autoclitic is shown by comparing such examples as I think…

... considering three examples: (a) Jones is ill, (b) Jones is not well, (c) “Jones is well” is false. Although all three of these responses may be emitted with respect…

The response no, as an example of a qualifying autoclitic, has the force of a mand. It may be roughly translated Don’t act upon this response as an unextended tact.…

A two-year-old girl had been taught not to touch objects by parents who, instead of saying No!, merely shook their heads. The child acquired the behavior of approaching a forbidden…

By a sort of magical extension, we also emit the mand [No!] when it is too late and the object has been shattered. The response is naturally extended to verbal…

The effect of no is clear when it is emitted as a mand specifying the cessation of nonverbal behavior on the part of the listener. We observe that someone is…

Russell thinks that the reason [for negation] is always verbal. Someone asks Is it raining? and we reply No, it is not raining . . . But the stimulus which…

The traditional solution, which seems to apply [to negation], is that there must be some reason for saying It IS raining whenever we say It is NOT raining. (p. 322)

In a logical or linguistic analysis, we may perhaps say that the referent of no rain is the absence of rain, but this is clearly impossible in a causal description.…

Once verbal behavior has occurred and become one of the objects of the physical world, it can be described like any other object. We have no reason to distinguish the…

Negative autoclitics qualify or cancel the response which they accompany but imply that the response is strong for some reason—for example, that it has been made by someone else. (p.…

Another group of autoclitics describe the state of strength of a response. I guess, I estimate, I believe, I imagine, and I surmise all indicate that the response which follows…

One type of descriptive autoclitic informs the listener of the kind of verbal operant it accompanies. If the speaker is reading a newspaper and remarks I see it is going…

The term “autoclitic” is intended to suggest behavior which is based upon or depends upon other verbal behavior. (p. 315)

Because controlling relations are so important, well-developed verbal environments encourage the speaker to emit collateral responses describing them. (p. 315)

When we ask “Did you see it, or did someone tell you?”, we are asking for more information about controlling relations. We are essentially asking, “Was your response a tact…

The ultimate explanation of any kind of verbal behavior depends upon the action which the listener takes with respect to it. (p. 314)

Although it is possible that such “knowing” may be nonverbal, the contingencies which generate a response to one’s own verbal responses are unlikely in the absence of social reinforcement. It…

The contingencies necessary for self-descriptive behavior are arranged by the community when it has reason to ask “What did you say?,” “Did you say that?,” “Why did you say that?,”…

The speaker may acquire verbal behavior descriptive of his own behavior. Although the community can establish such a repertoire only by basing its reinforcing contingencies upon observable behavior, the speaker…

Part of the behavior of an organism becomes in turn one of the variables controlling another part. (pp. 312-313)

The verbal operants we have examined may be said to be the raw material out of which sustained verbal behavior is manufactured. But who is the manufacturer? We cannot satisfactorily…

The verbal operant is a lively unit, in contrast with the sign or symbol of the logician or the word or sentence of the linguist, but it does not fully…

If an audience can be shown to strengthen a particular subdivision of a verbal repertoire, we do not need to say that a speaker chooses words appropriate to his audience.…