Editing Universal grammar (section)

== Evidence ==

{{further|Poverty of the stimulus}}

The idea that at least some aspects are innate is motivated by [[poverty of the stimulus]] arguments.<ref name = "AdgerPOS">{{cite book|last=Adger|first=David|author-link=David Adger|year=2003|title=Core syntax: A minimalist approach|publisher=Oxford University Press|pages=8–11|isbn=978-0199243709}}</ref><ref name ="Lasnik&LidzPOS">{{cite encyclopedia |title=The Argument from the Poverty of the Stimulus|last1=Lasnik|first1=Howard|author-link1=Howard Lasnik|last2=Lidz|first2=Jeffrey|author-link2=Jeffrey Lidz|encyclopedia=The Oxford Handbook of Universal Grammar|year=2017|editor-last=Roberts|editor-first=Ian|editor-link=Ian Roberts (linguist)|publisher=Oxford University Press|url=https://jefflidz.com/Docs/LasnikLidz2016.pdf}}</ref> For example, one famous poverty of the stimulus argument concerns the acquisition of [[yes–no question]]s in English. This argument starts from the observation that children only make mistakes compatible with rules targeting [[Phrase structure grammar|hierarchical structure]] even though the examples which they encounter could have been generated by a simpler rule that targets linear order. In other words, children seem to ignore the possibility that the question rule is as simple as "switch the order of the first two words" and immediately jump to alternatives that rearrange [[constituent (linguistics)|constituents]] in [[Tree (data_structure)|tree structure]]s. This is taken as evidence that children are born knowing that grammatical rules involve hierarchical structure, even though they have to figure out what those rules are.<ref name = "AdgerPOS"/><ref name ="Lasnik&LidzPOS"/><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Crain|first1=Stephen|author-link1=Stephen Crain|last2=Nakayama|first2=Mineharu|year=1987|title=Structure dependence in grammar formation|journal=Language|volume=63|issue=3|pages=522–543 |doi=10.2307/415004|jstor=415004 }}</ref>