| Summary: | Generative Linguistics proposes that the human ability to produce and comprehend language
is fundamentally underwritten by a uniquely linguistic innate system called Universal Grammar (UG). In
her recent paper What is Universal Grammar, and has anyone seen it? Ewa Dabrowska reviews a range of
evidence and argues against the idea of UG from a Cognitive Linguistics perspective. In the current paper,
I take each of Dabrowska’s arguments in turn and attempt to show why they are not well founded, either
because of flaws in her argumentation or because of a careful consideration of the available empirical
evidence. I also attempt to demonstrate how evidence from the fields Dabrowska reviews actually supports
the notion of UG. However, arguments are additionally presented in favor of integrating an understanding
of domain-specific UG with an understanding of domain-general cognitive capacities in order to understand
the language faculty completely.
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