  §§2.2-2.5 discuss the main arguments used by Chomsky and  others to support this ‘nativist’ view that what makes  language acquisition possible is the fact that much of our linguistic knowledge is unlearned; it is innate or inborn, part of the initial  state of the language   faculty.[2]  Section 3 presents a number of other avenues  of research that have been argued to bear on the innateness of  language, and shows how recent empirical research about language  learning and the brain may challenge the nativist position. Because  much of this material is very new, and because my conclusions (many  of which are tentative) are highly controversial, more references to  the empirical literature than are normal in an encyclopedia article  are included. The reader is encouraged to follow up on the research  cited and assess the plausibility of linguistic nativism for him or  herself: whether language is innate or not is, after all, an  empirical issue.