Syntax and general speech rules are instinctive, but vocabulary must be learned? Aren't syntax and general speech rules also learned? I've heard of the survival instinct, but never of the syntax and general speech rules instinct.
Also, when he says "perhaps even literacy would become innate eventually if illiterate people were at a reproductive disadvantage for long enough.", it sounds like some sort of Darwinesque literary natural selection at work. Bizarre!
Mr. Ridley has a very interesting viewpoint, to say the least.