When discussing the nativist approach to language acquisition it is very hard not to mention Noam Chomsky. He famously aligns himself with the nature side of this debate and puts forward the idea we have a ‘universal grammar’ built into our brains from birth. This theory claims children are born with an innate knowledge of the rules regarding grammar and this “distinguishes us from non-human animals” (Gusati 2009: 87). Chomsky (1960) believes the rules of syntax are too complex to acquire at the speed in which we do (Clark 2009: 369). Gusati argues that children’s “output surpasses [their] input” (2009: 99). This view is in accord with Chomsky’s claim that adults provide distorted data (Clark 2009: 369). Gusati presents Singleton and Newport’s 2004 case study of a deaf child named Simon as an attempt to provide some evidence for the presence of a universal grammar. This study finds that by the age of seven, Simon is able to use American Sign Language at a level equivalent to that of his peers who have been exposed to native ASL from birth. Interestingly Simon was exposed to three different levels of ASL. His parents learned ASL after the age of 15, his teacher used a manual version of ASL and his classmates knew no ASL at all (Gusati 2009: 100). Even though Simon’s input was inconsistent he was able to ‘regularise’ it and communicate without any errors. Gusati claims this could be evidence for the presence of a universal grammar as Simon was able to enrich his input by applying the knowledge of the guidelines we are born with (Gusati 2009: 105).