it without ever making a mistake, even if they would be at a loss to formulate
it. This state of affairs inspires the following conclusions in Chomsky:
Such facts as these are known to all speakers of English, and analogues
appear to hold in other languages. The facts are known without experience,
let alone training. The child must learn that ‘each other’ is a reciprocal
expression, but nothing more, so it seems. No pedagogic grammar would
mention such facts are those described above; the student can be expected
to know them without instruction. The principles that determine selection
of an antecedent, it seems reasonable to assume, belong to ‘universal
grammar’, that is, to the biological endowment that determines the general
structure of the language faculty. From another point of view, these principles
form part of a deductive, explanatory theory of human language.^13This text merits detailed analysis, for every sentence is problematic. The
‘analogues’ that ‘appear to hold in other languages’ are decidedly vague: how
many other languages? Is the analogue sufficiently precise, and sufficiently
extended, to allow us to speak of a linguistic universal? ‘The facts are known
without experience, let alone training’: the elevated register and rarity of the
construction (‘the candidates believed each other to be successful’ does not
pertain to current popular English and presupposes speakers subjected to
eight hours’ education a day for years on end), render explanation by learning
much more plausible. ‘No pedagogic grammar would mention such facts as
those described above’: but these ‘facts’ are in reality conditioned by theory.
Paedagogic grammars give a simpler rule (‘a reciprocal pronoun has an
antecedent in the plural that is usually the subject of the same clause’), which
perfectly covers the great majority of cases and requires only some adaptation
for complex cases, which (as we have just seen) do not presuppose a universal
grammar, but a certain linguistic register in a certain language. ‘The student
can be expected to know them without instruction’: as this construction is
rare, and elevated in register, we are always dealing with a population of
highly educated speakers. As for my francophone students, they commit
every imaginable error in these constructions: the principles are not as universal
as all that (and yet the French language also possesses reciprocal pronouns).
Finally, ‘the principles...belong to “universal grammar”’: this fixity is
doubtful, since the construction has a history and, given that the detail of the
28 • Chapter Two
(^13) Chomsky 1987, p. 421.