Grammar is not the grammar of any single language: it is the prespecification in the brain that permits the
learning of language to take place. So the grammar-acquiringcapacity is what Chomsky claims is innate. If the
child is not exposed to language, language will not develop (though see section 4.9.4). Perhaps the term
“Universal Grammar”is misleading and Chomsky should have called it“metagrammar”or“the seeds of
grammar.”But in order to preserve historical continuity, we are more or less forced to stick with this term,
whatever incorrect connotations it invites.The term“innate”also requires comment. For afirst approximation, it means“present at birth.”However, it is
customarily used more broadly to denote a characteristic that appears automatically in the course of an organism's
development, whether before or after birth. For instance the number and organization of human teeth, which develop
after birth, can be said to be innate. The ter mis nor mally contrasted with“acquired”characteristics, which are due to
the influence of the environment. It is now widely understood that most characteristics of organisms result from an
interaction of innate and environmental influences. The strength of one's muscles depends on exercise and nutrition.
But the fact that humans develop muscles in the places they have them is innate. So it is meant to be with speaking a
language: the capacity for acquiring a language may well develop in the brain over thefirst two or three years of life.
And thechild'sactualachievementsat speaking and understanding resultfrom theinter-actionofthiscapacitywith the
input in the environment.
•“Chomskyclaims thatthereisa universal,innateDeepStructure.”Notquite.As seeninthepreviouschapter,
Deep Structure denotes the level of a syntactic derivation prior to the application of derivational
(transformational) rules. The content of this level might or might not be universal.^39 However, even if Deep
Structure is universal, this cannot exhaust the scope of Universal Grammar, which must also prespecify the
possibilities for derivationalrules (ifany)and for constraintsin syntax, notto mention many important facets
of phonological structure.On the other hand, in theAspectsview, Universal Grammar does specifythat there is Deep Structure, even it does not
specifytheexactcontentofDeepStructureinanyparticular language. Thisispartoftheoverallfor mofgra m mar, one
that conditions the sorts of (f-)expectations children will have in trying to make sense of the incomprehensible noises
the people around the mare making. We return to this in section 4.4.
72 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS
(^39) However, the incorrect interpretationis encouraged by such statements as“In general, it should be expected that only descriptions concerned withdeep structure will have
serious import for proposals concerning linguistic universals”(Chomsky 1965: 209-10). There was a brief interest in the late 1960s in the“Universal Base Hypothesis,”in
which the Deep Structure of all languages was taken to be the same; this idea has been revived in more recent work such as Kayne (1994).