re : 3 . 427 innateness time for me to leap to the other side of the fence for a change . innateness does have a significance for linguistic theory itselt , if only in that the limitations of our inate abilities , mathematical , linguistic or what have you , limit the types of linguistic theories which can be plausibly constructed . processing of grammatical structures in real time is one example . of course , we know almost nothing about the capacity of human beings in this regard , which is slightly more or less than we know about universals of language , if any . < grin > . still , to the extent we have or can acquire information about our inate capacity for language ( assuming it to exist ) , it can help direct our energies in the proper direction . of course before we start talking about the limits of this capacity , we ought to have a clear picture of what sorts of linguistic phenomena are involved in spoken language , but that is the dreaded descriptivism again . . . eric schiller , department of linguistics , univ . of chicago