Languages are complex systems; its complexity is so enormous that many people dedicated

all their life to try to understand them. Remarkable people who deserved being recognised
for their vast labour in this field. Here, there is some remarkable people who made
exceptional progresses on understanding language:

Burrhus Frederic Skinner psychologist (1904 1990)

B.F. Skinner was an American psychologist born in Pennsylvania on March 20, 1904 in the
small town of Susquehanna, where he grew up. His father was a
lawyer and his mother stayed at home to care Skinner and his
brother. As a student at Hamilton College, B.F. Skinner developed a
passion for writing. He tried to become a professional writer after
graduating in 1926, but with little success. Two years later, Skinner
decided to pursue a new direction for his life. He enrolled at
Harvard University to study psychology.
At Harvard, B.F. Skinner looked for a more objective and measured
way to study behaviour. He developed what he called an operant
conditioning apparatus to do this, which became better known as
the Skinner box. With this device, Skinner could study an animal
interacting with its environment.
After finishing his doctorate degree and working as a researcher at Harvard, Skinner
published the results of his operant conditioning experiments in The Behaviour of
Organisms (1938).
In 1945, Skinner became the chair of the psychology department at Indiana University. But
he left two years later to return to Harvard as a lecturer. Skinner received a professorship
there in 1948 where he remained for the rest of his career. As his children grew, he became
interested in education. Skinner developed a teaching machine to study learning in children.
He later wrote The Technology of Teaching (1968).
In the late 1960s and early '70s, Skinner wrote several works applying his behavioural
theories to society, including Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971).
In 1989, Skinner was diagnosed with leukaemia. He succumbed to the disease the
following year, dying at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 18, 1990.
Avram Noam Chomsky academic, activist, journalist, linguist (1928 )
Noam Chomsky is a US political theorist and activist, and institute professor of linguistics
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Born in
Philadelphia on December 7, 1928, Noam Chomsky was an
intellectual prodigy who went on to earn a PhD in linguistics at
the University of Pennsylvania. Noam Chomsky was a brilliant
child, and his curiosities and intellect were kindled greatly by
his early experiences. His mother, Elsie Chomsky, had been
active in the radical politics of the 1930s. His father, William, a
Russian Jewish immigrant like his mother, was a respected
professor of Hebrew at Gratz College, an institution for
teachers training.
Just as World War II was coming to a close, Chomsky began
his studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He found little
use for his classes until he met Zellig S. Harris, an American
scholar touted for discovering structural linguistics. Chomsky was moved by what he felt
language could reveal about society. Harris was moved by Chomskys great potential and
did much to advance the young mans undergraduate studies, with Chomsky receiving his
B.A. and M.A in non-traditional modes of study. During his career as a professor, Chomsky
introduced transformational grammar to the linguistics field. His theory asserts that
languages are innate and that the differences we see are only due to parameters developed
over time in our brains, helping to explain why children are able to learn different
languages more easily than adults. One of his most famous contributions to linguistics is
what his contemporaries have called the Chomsky Hierarchy, a division of grammar into
groups, moving up or down in their expressive abilities.
Besides his work in linguistics, Chomsky is internationally recognized as one of the most
critically engaged public intellectuals alive today.
Jerome Seymout Bruner psychologist (1915 2016)
American psychologist Jerome Seymour Bruner (born 1915) made outstanding
contributions to the study of perception, cognition, and
education. He taught in universities in both the United States and
England and was the author of many articles and books in the
field of psychology and education.
Jerome Seymour Bruner was born on October 1, 1915, to Polish
immigrant parents, Herman and Rose (Gluckmann) Bruner. He
was born blind and did not achieve sight until after two cataract
operations while he was still an infant. He attended public
schools, graduating from high school in 1933, and entered Duke
University where he majored in psychology, earning the AB
degree in 1937. Bruner then pursued graduate study at Harvard
University, receiving the MA in 1939 and the Ph.D. in 1941.
During World War II, he served under General Eisenhower in the Psychological Warfare
Division of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force Europe. After the war, he
joined the faculty at Harvard University in 1945.
When Bruner entered the field of psychology, it was roughly divided between the study of
perception and the analysis of learning. The first was mentalistic and subjective, while the
second was behaviouristic and objective. At Harvard, the psychology department was
dominated by behaviourists who followed a research program called psychophysics, the
view that psychology is the study of the senses and how they react to the world of physical
energies or stimuli. Bruner's interest moved from perception to cognition how people
think. This new direction was stimulated by Bruner's discussions in the early 1950s with
Robert Oppenheimer, the nuclear physicist, around whether the idea in the scientist's mind
determined the natural phenomenon being observed.
Bruner was drawn toward new developments in philosophy and anthropology: linguistic
philosophy for insight into human language capacities and how thoughts are organized into
logical syntax and cultural anthropology for insight into how thinking is culturally
conditioned. In spite of his many contributions to academic psychology, Bruner is perhaps
best known for his work in education, most of which he undertook during his years with the
Center for Cognitive Studies.
Lev Seminovich Vygotski psychologist (1896 1934)
Lev Vygotsky was a seminal Russian psychologist who is best-known for his sociocultural
theory. He believed that social interaction played a critical role in
children's learning. Through such social interactions, children go
through a continuous process of learning. Vygotsky noted,
however, that culture profoundly influenced this process.
Imitation, guided learning, and collaborative learning all play a
critical part in his theory.
Lev Vygotsky was born in Orsha, a city in the western region of
the Russian Empire.
He attended Moscow State University, where he graduated with
a degree in law in 1917. He studied a range of topics white
attending university, including sociology, linguistics, psychology,
and philosophy. However, his formal work in psychology did not
begin until 1924 when he attended the Institute of Psychology in Moscow.
Lev Vygotsky was a prolific writer, publishing six books on psychology topics over a ten-
year period. His interests were quite diverse but often centred on issues of child
development and education.
Lev Vygotsky is considered a formative thinker in psychology, and much of his work is still
being discovered and explored today. While he was a contemporary of Skinner, Pavlov,
Freud, and Piaget, his work never attained their level of eminence during his lifetime. Part
of this was because the Communist Party often criticized his work in Russia, and so his
writings were largely inaccessible to the Western world. His premature death at age 37 also
contributed to his obscurity.
It wasn't until the 1970s that Vygotsky's theories became known in the West as new
concepts and ideas were introduced in the fields of educational and developmental
psychology.
Jean Piaget psychologist (1896 1980)
Jean Piaget was born on August 9, 1896, in Neuchtel, Switzerland, becoming an expert on
the study of molluscs by his teen years. Over the course of
his later career in child psychology, he identified four stages
of mental development that chronicled young people's
journeys from basic object identification to highly abstract
thought. The recipient of an array of honours, Piaget died on
September 16, 1980, in Geneva, Switzerland.
Biologist and psychologist Jean Piaget was born on August 9,
1896, in Neuchtel, Switzerland. He was his parents first
child. Piagets mother, Rebecca Jackson, attributed his
intense early interest in the sciences to his own neurotic
tendencies. Yet his father, a medieval literature professor
named Arthur, modelled a passionate dedication to his studies
a trait that Piaget began to emulate from an early age.
After high school, Piaget went on to study zoology at the
University of Neuchtel, receiving his Ph.D. in the natural sciences in 1918. That same year
Piaget spent a semester studying psychology under Carl Jung and Paul Eugen Bleuler at the
University of Zrich, where Piaget developed a deeper interest in psychoanalysis. Over the
course of the next year, he studied abnormal psychology at the Sorbonne in Paris.
In 1920, working in collaboration with Thodore Simon at the Alfred Binet Laboratory in
Paris, Piaget evaluated the results of standardized reasoning tests that Simon had designed.
The tests were meant to measure child intelligence and draw connections between a childs
age and the nature of his errors.
Over the course of his six-decade career in child psychology, Piaget also identified four
stages of mental development. The first is called the "sensorimotor stage," which involves
learning through motor actions and takes place when children are 02 years old. During the
"preoperation stage," children aged 37 develop intelligence through the use of symbolic
language, fantasy play and natural intuition. During the "concrete operational stage,"
children 811 develop cognitively through the use of logic that is based on concrete
evidence. "Formal operations," the fourth and final stage, involves 12-to-15-year-olds
forming the ability to think abstractly with more complex understandings of logic and cause
and effect.
Jean Piaget died of unknown causes on September 16, 1980, in Geneva, Switzerland. He
was 84 years old. His body rests at the Cimetire des Plainpalais.