Editing Transformational grammar (section)

===Innate linguistic knowledge===
Using a term such as "transformation" may give the impression that theories of transformational generative grammar are intended as a model of the processes by which the human mind constructs and understands sentences, but Chomsky clearly stated that a generative grammar models only the knowledge that underlies the human ability to speak and understand, arguing that because most of that knowledge is innate, a baby can have a large body of knowledge about the structure of language in general and so need to ''learn'' only the idiosyncratic features of the language(s) to which it is exposed.{{Citation needed|date=October 2021}}

Chomsky is not the first person to suggest that all languages have certain fundamental things in common. He quoted philosophers who posited the same basic idea several centuries ago. But Chomsky helped make the innateness theory respectable after a period dominated by more behaviorist attitudes towards language. He made concrete and technically sophisticated proposals about the structure of language as well as important proposals about how grammatical theories' success should be evaluated.<ref>{{cite web |last1=McLeod |first1=S |title=Language Acquisition |url=https://www.simplypsychology.org/language.html |website=Simply Psychology |access-date=21 February 2019}}</ref>