Grammarian

I suspect Noam Chomsky was substantially wrong about his idea of “universal grammar,” but correct to argue that language acquisition and use is innate.

“Universal grammar” as such appears to me to be just the concordance certain sensory and causal-seeming experiences must have with the world and with our sensory apparatuses.

Where I’m guessing Chomsky went wrong is that the idea of universal grammar doesn’t dictate that some innate, hidden grammar corresponding to features universal to all languages, but rather a more-accurate account is that language tendencies are partially genetic (Would humans invent language again? Of course.), and that due to the structure of the world both as we perceive it at and at a remove as it actually is, language was constrained to and by certain parameters — not to mention the usefulness tradeoffs such as time, processing, and semantic complexity.