Chomsky and others, Stich asserts do not really study a broad range of languages in attempting to construct theories about universal grammatical structure and language acquisition, but merely speculate on the basis of “a single language, or at best a few closely related languages” (814). Stich’s assertion is both false and irrelevant. Transformational grammarians have investigated languages drawn from a wide range of unrelated language families. But this is beside the point, since even if Stich were right in saying that all but a few closely related languages have been neglected by transformational grammarians, this would imply only that they ought to get busy studying less closely related languages, not that there is some problem in relating grammar construction to the study of linguistic universals. (Chomsky & Katz 1974:361)

References

Chomsky, N. and Katz, G. 1974. What the linguist is talking about. Journal of Philosophy 71(2): 347-367.