He was inspired by the way wffs are recursively defined for formal languages like logic. If this is right, then acquiring linguistic competence means acquiring a collection of recursive grammatical rules. This question is particularly pressing because linguists have shown that the basic rules governing the syntax of human languages are very complex. We still have a long way to go in formulating a full fledged theory of the grammatical structure of English. Despite the fact that decades of research have not uncovered a complete story, even little children who have learned English display excellent abilities at judging correct syntactic form.
Language learning is an astonishing achievement.
The accomplishment is all the more amazing when we examine the data the child has to go on. The child rarely gets crucial negat ive evidence. Poorly formed sentences that the child actually hears or uses are hardly ever corrected. Chomsky argued that the data children actually have to go on is too poor to allow them to predict the grammar of the language they are trying to learn. The LAD is part of our genetic endowment and explains why humans are so much better than the animals at language.