Re: Why grammar is so complex a subject

I'd say your idea is an exaggeration, but that there's some truth to it.
  I don't think that languages are 100% rule-driven, but at the same
time, I don't believe there are NO rules.  My theory is that each child,
in learning to speak, essentially creates his own patterns out of what
she hears around her, and, at the same time, files away various
exceptions.  Thus, I'd say that the truth lies between the common
linguistic idea of languages being nothing more than a set of rules, and
your notion of languages being nothing more than a set of exceptions.

I doubt that there's any special "language module" as Chomsky, et al.
posited, rather, I think it's simply an extension of the already-present
pattern-detection system, or at most, a specialized subsystem thereof.