Passage 26 There are between 3,000 and 6,000 public languages in the world, and we must add approximately 6 billion private languages since each one of us 1) _____ has one. Considering these facts, the possibilities for breakdowns in communication seem 2) _____ in number. However, we do communicate successfully from time to time. And we do learn to speak languages. But learning to speak languages seems to be a very 3) _____ process. For a long time, people thought that we learned a language only by imitation and association. For example, a baby touches a hot pot and starts to cry. The mother says, "Hot, hot!" However, Noam Chomsky, a famous expert in language, 5) _____ that although children do learn some words by imitation and association, they also combine words to make meaningful sentences in ways that are 6) _____, unlearned and creative. Because young children can make sentences they have never heard before, Chomsky suggested that human infants 7)_____ the ability to learn language. Chomsky meant that 8)_____ all the differences between public and private languages, there is a universal language 9) _____ that makes it possible for us, as infants, to learn any language in the world. This theory explains the 10) _____ that human infants have for learning language. But it does not really explain how children come to use language in particular ways.