Cross-linguistic typological work (Evans and Levinson, 2009) shows that purported linguistic universals are better characterized as tendencies with systematic exceptions, undermining the empirical basis for a fixed UG.
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(as a more accurate description of language patterns)
Patterns that usually show up in languages, but regularly have cases where they don't apply, rather than being absolute rules.
Universal Grammar (UG)(Chomskyan linguistics)
A theory positing innate representations of linguistic principles such as Binding Theory, Theta theory, the ECP, the principle of Greed, and Shortest Path that constrain the language acquisition mechanism
linguistic universals(Examples include constraints on the movement of elements during a derivation and the syntactic distinction between nouns and verbs.)
Features thought to be common to all natural languages.