In this paper I consider recent studies that deny the existence of Universal Grammar (UG), and I show how the concept of UG that is attacked in these works is quite different from Chomsky’s, and thus that such criticisms are not valid. My principal focus is on the notions of ‘linguistic specificity’ and of ‘innateness’, and I conclude that, since the controversy about UG is based on misinterpretations, it is rendered sterile and thus does unnecessary harm to linguistic science. I also address the underlying reasons for these misunderstandings and suggest that, once they have been clarified, there is much scope for complementary approaches that embrace different research traditions within current theoretical linguistics.

中文翻译：

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通用语法准备好退休了吗？对长期误解的简短回顾

在本文中，我考虑了最近否认普遍语法（UG）存在的研究，并展示了在这些作品中受到攻击的普遍语法概念与乔姆斯基的完全不同，因此这种批评是无效的。我的主要关注点是“语言特异性”和“先天性”的概念，我得出的结论是，由于关于 UG 的争论是基于误解，它变得毫无意义，因此对语言科学造成了不必要的伤害。我还解决了这些误解的根本原因，并建议，一旦澄清了这些误解，在当前理论语言学中包含不同研究传统的互补方法就有很大的余地。