Abstract This paper reviews an approach to the enterprise of paring away universals of attested languages to reveal the essential universals that require their own explanation. An example, discussed at this conference, is the long-standing puzzle presented by the Extended Projection Principle (EPP, Chomsky 1981). I am suggesting an explanation for the EPP based on the learner’s need for constructions to have a common superficial form, with common thematic relations, the hallmark of EPP. If one treats EPP phenomena as the result of normal processes of language acquisition, the phenomena not only receive an independently motivated explanation, they also no longer constitute a structural anomaly in syntactic theory.
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