traditional [[chain of thought]] [[social influence|argument]] from [[1928 Noam Chomsky]] and highly [[social influence|influential]] on [[generative grammar]]: (this specific structure from [[2017CowieInnatenessLanguage]]): 1. [[linguistic competence]] depends on [[form]]al properties of [[human language]] (ie grammar) 2. in order to [[inductive bias|learn]] a particular [[grammar rule]] $G$, children would need access to [[dataset]] / [[utterance]]s $D$ to [[falsify]] other hypotheses 3. the [[primary linguistic data]] does not reliably contain $D$ 4. therefore $G$ cannot be [[inductive bias|learn]]ed (must be [[innate]]ly known) 5. this holds for many $G$ 6. this wide range of [[innate]] [[form]]al knowledge makes up [[universal grammar]] ^argument see [[linguistic brain teaser]] for some examples / [[falsify|evidence]]; see [[criticism of generative grammar]] for the takedown ![[2003TomaselloConstructingLanguageUsagebased#^noise]] ![[2025-07-16 Kempner lunch and learn linguistics talk#sources]]