> It's clear that Chomsky and Universal Syntax has held back the entire field of AI
That may be true, but there is value to understanding language for the sake of language outside the practical goals of improving AI. There is plenty of evidence for parameters playing a role in human language whether or not a parametric implementation of NLP is possible, desirable or necessary. It's certainly true that a statistical approach that bears plenty of fruit in AI applications is going to be very strained to provide anything of value back to linguistics or developmental psychology.
That may be true, but there is value to understanding language for the sake of language outside the practical goals of improving AI. There is plenty of evidence for parameters playing a role in human language whether or not a parametric implementation of NLP is possible, desirable or necessary. It's certainly true that a statistical approach that bears plenty of fruit in AI applications is going to be very strained to provide anything of value back to linguistics or developmental psychology.