[…] the vast mass of human children are not growing up in even a partial linguistic vacuum. There will be a ready-made language which their elders will be determined that they should learn. Thus, almost (but not quite) from the earliest stages, the evolving bioprogram will interact with the target language. Sometimes features in the bioprogram will be very similar to features in the target language, in which case we will find extremely rapid, early, and apparently effortless learning. Sometimes the target language will have evolved away from the bioprogram, to a greater or lesser extent, and in these cases we will expect to find common or even systematic “errors” which, in orthodox learning theory, will be attributed to “incorrect hypotheses” formed by the child, but which, I shall claim, are simply the result of the child’s ignoring (because he is not ready for it) the data presented by speakers of the target language and following out instead the instructions of his bioprogram.
- Bickerton (1981), a pag.135