Exactly. Strict empiricism runs into all sorts of problems in linguistics, cognitive sciences and even social sciences (which is why sociologits and economystics dislike Chomsky after they read his philosophy of science). We ran into this point when discussing Russell and Wittgenstein. Chomsky follows in the tradition of Russell as well as American structuralist linguistics. Philosophically, his position contrasts with empiricism in that he is an extreme RATIONALIST (this is only a partial contrast, not a contradiction, you could be a rationalist and an empiricist at the same time) . OTOH, he is not into top-down superstructuralist social theory either. Please forgive any typos--I was in a hurry.
Charles Jannuzi