  We saw in the previous section that in order to support the view that all of UG is innately known, nativists about language need to hold  not just that the data for language learning is impoverished in a few isolated instances, but that it's impoverished across the board. That is, in order to support the view that the innate contribution to  language acquisition is something as rich and detailed as knowledge  of Universal Grammar, nativists must hold that the inputs to language acquisition are defective in many and widespread cases. (After all,  if the inputs were degenerate only in a few isolated instances, such  as those discussed above, the learning problem could be solved simply by positing innate knowledge of a few relevant linguistic hints,  rather than all of UG.)