language to be learnt by matching the innate knowledge of basic grammatical
relationships to the structures of the particular language in the environment.
However influential the theory of Chomsky seems to be, it is not without its
limitations. Chomsky’s (1965: 4) claim that ‘Linguistic theory is concerned with an
ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows
its language perfectly’ reveals a structural approach to language, which as Wood
(1988: 96), stresses leads him not to be concerned with ‘real’ spe