Oooh, I missed this one.
Chomsky's main hypothesis (since eschewed) was that there is a "universal semantic" or core of language knowledge which we all share. I don't think I ever read that he claimed that it was genetically hardwired into us, although clearly there is a genetically-conferred ability to speak.
What he stated was that there is an underlying core of meaning which we all understand and that our languages must therefore all be based on similar basic semantic structures because of this. The idea of a basement-level universal language came from this hypothesis. Did well for him, too, academically.
Of course, he was wrong. We may have syntactic and semantic structures for similar situations - the ones which are common to us all - but Chomsky was unable to show that such structures had anything in common across all languages, cultures and races.
Oh, for NicholasW to appear from nowhere and give us his view on this!
